FIRST DRIVE 2014 SRT Viper TA

But the magic of the Viper TA, which uses the very same powerplant as the standard SRT and the deeply contented GTS, isn't in the massive V10 engine. Rather, it lies in a host of synergistic components that allowed the best drivers at our testday to come out of Willow's treacherous Turn 9 with enough speed to require the shift up into fifth. Because, while it's perfectly natural to drop your jaw and gawk at the heroic power and torque figures this car offers, being able to use them to their fullest on a fast track requires some rather tricky work on the part of the SRT team. Thankfully these guys seem to live for shaving off seconds and adding exit speed; the daubs of extra handling performance that make the TA such a monster on a super-fast track like Big Willow.

Many of you might have first heard about the Viper TA by way of an article and video Motor Trend put together this past spring. The car the MT crew drove for that outing was a very early sample of the TA formula, accelerated by the SRT team as a way of demonstrating that the Viper could indeed out-gun the 2013 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 around Laguna Seca. That trial resulted in racing driver Randy Pobst setting a new production car lap record at Laguna, but the specifications of the record-breaking car are slightly different than they are for this 2014 model year production version.