1996 RT 10 with an interesting past

[DRM1125R]

Hey all, I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself and my new acquisition. Many of you might already know me and my green beast Envy, the SSG 2005 SRT-10 truck.
About 3 weeks ago a customer of mine mentioned to me that they knew of a local guy selling a Viper but did not have much info on it other than his phone number, so for grins and giggles I gave the guy a call to set up an appointment to see the car since he had it listed for a really reasonable price.

While checking over the car I took a picture of the VIN tag on the door and texted it back to a buddy of mine at the dealership I work for to pull the Autocheck and see if she had a clean title and decent past. The Autocheck came back clean and I paid little more attention to it or the car the next few days. In all reality I almost past on the car, simply because although I really want a Viper, I had very little interest in a RT/10, especially a white one.

A few days later while looking over the pictures I took something hit me, the end of the VIN had a large amount of zeros. So I contacted one of my co-workers at my Dodge store and had them pull the VIN option list. While going over the options, 2 of them stood out and raised a red flag, 4BAA and 4ZV, "Company Car Tracking" and "Show Vehicle Tracking", two options I have never seen before.
I then reached out to some friends of mine, one of them an engineer on the SRT team, Jeff at the Viper Registry, Mike at Havik Performance, to see what info I could find out about the car.

One of my buddies put me in touch with Maurice, who ended up being a huge help. He was able to confirm that the car I found was indeed ordered for "marketing use" and "it would have been displayed at auto shows and events." He also confirmed my suspicions about someone changing a few things on the car. It currently has polished rims instead of white ones and someone painted stripes on the hard top to match the ones on the hood and trunk. It also has an aftermarket radio (i notice that seems common in these cars) and the light switch next to the fog light switch is hooked up to strobe lights in the headlights, fog lights and reverse lights. The previous owner said the strobes were in it when he got the car but not hooked up, he traced the wires all over the car and re-attached them not knowing what they were for.

Now to the fun part! My plan is to take the car back to factory specs and make her a 9.5/10. The same body shop that painted my SRT-10 will be going over this car with a fine tooth comb and help make that happen.
When I acquired the car she was a 5.5/6 at best. Although it is mechanically sound, she has not had a good cleaning in a long time and the paint has a few small cracks and needs a really good re-freshening. We will be taking the stripes off the hardtop (which are the wrong shade of blue anyways), repainting the rims to white, replacing the under hood mat if I can find one in good shape and replacing the radio.
I'm excited to have an awesome piece of Chrysler history and feel like it should look as it did when it left the factory and toured the show circuit, and I look forward to sharing her journey with you guys and the Viper community.

[dalton202]

Beautiful car!

[swexlin]

Good luck. She needs a good detailing, to be sure. Looking forward to the "done" pics.

[Mopar'er no car]

Congrats Dave!
look forward to seeing her...Now go slam that Join button!!!

Having a BBQ in may...Ill post a thread up soon...

[BrianACR]

Wow what a neat find! Can't wait to see pics once she's back up to that almost new look.

[DRM1125R]

Congrats Dave!
look forward to seeing her...Now go slam that Join button!!!

Having a BBQ in may...Ill post a thread up soon...

Cool. As long as it’s not my Buell weekend I’ll try to be there!

[John333]

Congrats Dave! Very cool find. Glad you snagged it. It deserves to be restored and displayed at meets.