Australian members?

[Rod Eakins]

As an Australian I have only recently joined the ranks of Viper owners, my 2002 convertible is still being converted to right hand drive. I do not think we have many of these cars in Australia, but I was wondering how many owners there might be, and do they read this forum. If any owner in Australia, or New Zealand, is interested in making contact please reply to this note so we can work out a way to communicate.

[Bill Pemberton]

Rod,

There were some Vipers sent to Australia in 2002 ( 30 to be exact ) , by Chrysler, to be converted to right hand drive. Of those sent, only 26 were completed and 4 were actually sent back to the States. We know this as we purchased these 4 cars back and they were sold in the US. The cars still likely have stickers in their doors showing they were sent overseas to the land down under, but I will see if I can find the name of the folks that did the conversions. I know there was a guy named Dee that used to be on various forums that had a conversion company in Australia and he also worked on Vipers converted to race in your Country. Best of luck and I do hope you get some responses as it would be great to have some Aussies at our next Viper Gathering in 2016 in New Orleans!!

[Fatboy 18]

Was it this company?

http://www.viperformance.com.au/viper/conversions.php

[JonB ~ PartsRack]

Yes it was...

PartsRack bought the take-offs from them for the 30 RHD conversions, a container of like-new parts from the Land of Oz.

Not all of the converted cars were sold in OZ-NZ, some RHD went to Japan

[Fatboy 18]

Jon, So do you have RHD dash boards and parts to convert a current LHD to RH? There might be people interested in the UK?

[Bill Pemberton]

Interesting Jon, I never knew anything about the parts that came off the 26 , and would never have suspected you got them back to Washington -- but then few knew about the 4 that came back to Blair after a trip half way around the World. Was not aware any went to Japan either, and mad at myself that I can't remember the color of the Gen IIs that we got -- seems one was a Graphite RT-10?

[JonB ~ PartsRack]

Fats: We did not get ANY of the RHD parts. We wanted the take-off LHD OE parts, and we got a container filled with them: Steering racks, dashboards, bezels, steering columns, Airboxes and A/C plenums, pedal sets, knee panels, owners manuals and videos (!) and more..

The S/H/I to go OZ-CA-WA was spendy! I still have some of the RT10 center bezels, pristine as the day they left CAAP. All the center consoles sold out years ago. Racks too.

Bill: We kept our surplus-buying successes MUM for many years. Even our 2007 Arrow buyout was mum until just last week. The sale to Prefix allowed me to blab a bit.... Ah, the GOOD OLD DAYS were fun til a certain not-for-profit interfered and copied our biz plans and pressured our sources.

My numbers show 36 RT10s went to OZ, 'dumped' in Asia by Chrysler. This due to the glut of 450HP G2 convertibles caused by the demand for the pending 2003 SRT10. Most were Red, but a smatter of Yellow and Graphite too. "Surplused" sounds better than "dumped"..

The 2002 GTS sold out here due to 360 'Final Edition' surplus GTSs that were dressed up like ORECA and given a dash-plaque. No "Special Edition" was ever that large again.

[Bill Pemberton]

Well if you got 30 dashes in trade, and we got 4 cars back, then maybe only 34 made it over? We got all our info from our Rep , though he did say that delays in production and in shipping the cars over meant that Chrysler was sending the four back to the States. Your data solves part of the puzzle, but the weird part is I thought we got two Coupes and two RT-10s, but then that was 12 years ago and after selling 1500 new Vipers will have to admit I don't remember all of them,ha.