Strange description of Viper for sale Help

[Leigh]

There is a Viper just posted for sale in Australia on Carsales.com.au that reads, 1998 Viper GTS COBRA. It is blue with white stripes and looks to me like a 1997 GTS with nothing particularly special about it. He makes the statement that this model of Viper GTS COBRA is rare and he is asking $125,000 for it. Is he just bull shitting or delusional or is there such a thing?

[My98RT10]

Definitively a standard 97 Viper GTS. Maybe it is rare because it has the steering wheel on the wrong side ;-) It does have an aftermarket exhaust though. But that does not justify the ridiculously high asking price IMHO...

Weired looking engine bay with many things located in different places due to right hand drive... never seen one before...

[sonicbloo]

There are 3 Vipers on that site for sale. The '97 is the cheapest by far.

Yellow 2000 RT10 145,000 Aus $ (97000 US)

Silver 2009 coupe 159,900 Aus $ (107000 US)

Maybe the OP can let us know how much to import a car from the US, whether RHD is mandatory, what taxes are due on an import etc

[AZTVR]

There is a Viper just posted for sale in Australia on Carsales.com.au that reads, 1998 Viper GTS COBRA. It is blue with white stripes and looks to me like a 1997 GTS with nothing particularly special about it. He makes the statement that this model of Viper GTS COBRA is rare and he is asking $125,000 for it. Is he just bull shitting or delusional or is there such a thing?

Yes, the car is a 1997 model. I have never read of a "Cobra" edition. OEM Equipment description for that car here: https://www.jeep.com/webselfservice/...ER69E1VV301451

[Lalmeida617]

These cars were probably imported and converted to RHD by Viperformance. They are very expensive import and convert. Something like 46k AUS, plus the cost of the car. A while back they were selling off all of the tooling used to do the conversions. Sometime in the early 2000’s AUS changed there laws for importing anything fun and it really hurt there business.

[Leigh]

Thanks, I have learnt that only 1995 or before are allowed into Australia and not require a conversion all other years must be converted at a base price of $60,000 AU just for the conversion.
I still can't find anything that indicates that there has ever been a model called COBRA. So if I was to buy a Viper from the U.S. at a price of say $40,000 US ($70,000 AU) plus shipping
$20,000 AU plus conversion $60,000 AU plus duty and taxes $7,000 AU the car would cost me about $157,000 AU.

[My98RT10]

There was never a Viper model or edition called Cobra from Chrysler or the factory. Sellers sometimes are creative in attaching names or adjectives that they think help the sale, especially if the buyer is not an expert. They may as well just want to refer to Viper's heritage...

[Fatboy 18]

I was in contact with Viper formance last year, they have a couple of containers full of conversion parts and take off OEM Parts for early Vipers. I was invited to make an offer for all the parts, but they were not interested in selling off individual items. For us in the UK it would have meant buying the parts, then getting the container shipped to the UK, then finding someone willing to store the container etc.....That said, we did put in a substantial offer, but the owner did not accept the offer.

So the parts are still out there in a container. (I have many photographs of all the parts and mouldings, here is just a small selection of the parts,new and used).
vipertooling15.jpg
vipertooling4.jpg
vipertooling13.jpg
VIP26.jpg
VIP17.jpg

As for the OPs original question on a Cobra Viper.....No Such thing. Its Just a Viper, but if its RHD, the cost of conversion was huge.

[Fatboy 18]

The trouble is, the market for many of the parts is so limited that you would be sitting of a lot of stuff that would likely never sell