Good Design: Dodge Viper
A well-designed product seems to fill a gap in the market so perfectly that it almost has a sense of reverence about it. It just works; it just fits, and it plays a role in the consumer’s life that makes it worth fixing and cherishing. These are products like the iPod/iPhone, the KitchenAid Stand Mixer, the Swiss Army Knife, and in this designer’s opinion, the Dodge Viper.
The Need
In the late 1980’s Chrysler was struggling. They had received a $1.5 billion bailout loan which wasn’t looked kindly upon by the general public and in return they were currently producing cars like the LeBaron, Laser, and Horizon, none of which are worth showing here. They were cars with 2-liter engines producing around 100 horsepower which wasn’t enough to thrill anyone. Meanwhile, Chevrolet had the Corvette and Ford had it’s Mustang, but Chrysler had nothing to give the car enthusiast crowd. Even then, the 80’s Mustangs are not a hot commodity today, so much so that the Mustang crowd pretend they don’t exist, and the 80’s Corvettes are only slightly more desirable. Gone were the golden years of the 60’s and the raw power muscle cars. The classic ‘67 Mustang Fastback, the aggressive ’67 Corvette Stingray, and the sexy early 60’s Shelby Cobra were now classics, and no American car manufacturer had anything new to show. This observation and pure desperation prompted Chrysler President Bob Lutz to make a gutsy move; he wanted to try and produce a new American muscle car. To do so he brought in Chrysler designer Tom Gale and soon after the car debuted at the North American International Auto Show in 1989. What drove onto the stage shocked the world. The Dodge Viper.
When the Dodge Viper was introduced it blew people away. In an era where the Mustang had a 4.9-liter (5.0) V8 engine and the Corvette showed off a 5.7-liter V8, Dodge introduced a wicked 8-liter V10 engine producing 400 horsepower in the Viper. It went 0-60 mph in 4.2 seconds and was not a car for the faint of heart. The Mustang and Corvette both claimed to be daily drivers that you could take to the track, but the Viper was a track car that you happened to be able to drive home. There was no air conditioning, no windows, no door handles, no traction control, no ABS brakes, and the exhaust exited out the side behind the driver’s door which tended to burn unsuspecting drivers as they got out. Without any of these driving aids the Viper was a pure driving experience. The Viper finally filled the gap left behind after the end of the American muscle car era. As car enthusiast Casey Putsch states, “The appeal of the Viper is first and foremost the driving of it, the car is truly raw, it’s simply unbridled American.”
The Form and Function
In good design, form follows function, and that can absolutely be said for the Viper. The long hood is taken from the muscle cars of the 1960’s, but that long hood also provides for room to fit that long V10 engine. The curved hood, fenders, and the double domed roof, were inspired from the Shelby Cobra, but the double domed roof was also necessary to fit helmets for the driver and passenger when on the track since the roof line had such a low profile. Then you come to the raw nature of the beast. All of the normal comforts and aids like air conditioning and traction control take energy away from the purpose of the machine, which is to head down the track as fast as possible. The lack of creature comforts and the side exhaust also helped reduce the weight of the Viper to a sleek 3300 lbs. But who is supposed to buy this track-based production car given it isn’t meant for the casual observer? It’s meant for those who love what it is made to do; it’s made for those who love to drive.
“Driving the Viper is great for two reasons, you can lug around at idle at 1500 RPM’s, but at any moment it’s instantaneous power, instantaneous torque, and it’s visceral and it snarls and it gets raspy at higher RPM’s and it just goes.” - Casey Putsch
The Viper is meant for the person who doesn’t want to feel power taken away by an overly cautious traction control system. It’s meant for the person who doesn’t care if going out for a morning drive wakes the neighbors on the way out, and Chrysler knew that when it was designed. The reason there is such a dedicated following for the Viper is because for a portion of the market, this is the perfect product. That doesn’t mean that everyone loves the long hood and side vent cutouts or that it’s ever going to get off of the “gas guzzler” list averaging 12 mpg, but that doesn’t matter to the intended audience. A good design doesn’t need to appeal to everyone, a good design just needs to fit perfectly into the space it was intended to fill, and for a chunk of the car enthusiast crowd, that is exactly what the Dodge Viper does. For music lovers throughout the world, that is what the iPod does; and that is what the KitchenAid does for its intended audience, as well as the Swiss Army Knife. They fit perfectly into the space they were intended to fill.
Understanding the Market
When Chrysler designed the Viper, they understood the audience and market that they were targeting. But how are designers supposed to know what the market wants and what the product space looks like? Ideally, the designer is a part of that target audience and knows the space because he has experience with the competitor’s products and knows what is missing in the market. If that’s not already the case, then the designer at least needs to get into the mind of the target audience. Experience what they experience, talk with them about their struggles and complaints about the existing products in the space and see what ideas they have about what improvements could be made. In designing the Dodge Viper, Chrysler put together a team of engineers, “Team Viper”, that were part of the market and they simply designed a car that they would enjoy themselves.
This kind of design means that a Viper is not in every driveway in America, and that it only appeals to a specific part of the market, but for the Viper, that works. However, for a lot of products that are trying to appeal to a broad audience, this style of designing won’t work. Cars like the Honda Civic Sport appeal to a wider audience that want a sporty car but still want to feel safe and not go to the gas station every few hours. Products like that make a lot of money and in many ways make a lot of sense to design; products like that have a clear widespread appeal. However, products like that won’t be rebuilt, they won’t be cherished, and they won’t be remembered. They’ll fill a purpose for a time and then be replaced by the next new trend in a few years. So as designers we have to ask ourselves a question, “What kind of product is this?” Sometimes the answer to that question will be that this is a dollar store item that is cheap and replaceable, and that’s fine. But, if a designer wants to make a product of a higher caliber, the Dodge Viper should be looked at as one of those products that fit perfectly into their space. As a product designer and car enthusiast myself, I find the Dodge Viper to be a masterpiece and it inspires me to make products like it; that are cherished, remembered, and just work…with 400 horsepower.
References
[1] Hubbach, R.N., “Automobile”,1993, United States Design Patent, USD360171S
[2] Putsch, Casey, “Dodge Viper - Everything You Need to Know | Up to Speed.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Oct. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQlD2e5Dc7U.
