New VOA member introducing my 97 GTS race car

[AIllick]

Hello all. I've had my GTS for almost two years now, and my local Viper buddies have finally convinced me to join the VOA. I've been an absolute Viper fanatic since the gen 1 RT/10 hit the magazines. I was old enough to watch the Oreca GTS's race at Le Mans and in the ALMS against the C5R. What a great time for racing!

Personally, I've been involved in racing and motorsport since a very young age. I've done and/or raced BMX, downhill mountain bikes, sport motorcycles, dirt bikes, and now I'm doing time trial and autocross.

I've always had my eye on a Viper but there never was a good time to jump on one. Watching the market over the years I've seen gen 1 RT/10's for $12,000 and high mile B/W GTS's for $26,000!

Eventually I got to a point where I could afford to store and build a long term racecar project. Over the course of about 7 years, I built one very potent Mustang for autocross. One day I stumbled across a Bring A Trailer auction for a racecar GTS that had a parts list that was perfect for CAM (classic american muscle) class autocross, and it sold for a very low price. But, the auction sold a year and a half in the past. So, I ended up tracking the car down to a dealership in Dallas that specialized in selling used Teslas of all things. I patiently waited for the dealership to drop their exorbitantly high price, and once they did I called to schedule a time to see the car.

I'll remember the day I first saw the car for the rest of my life. It was absolutely love at first sight, the Gen 2 GTS is just such an amazing looking car to begin with and to see one decked out as a race car... it was just perfect!

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I looked over the car, climbed over the roll cage door bar, and immediately thought "how in the hell am I gonna drive this thing!" As we all know, the seat, pedals, and wheel are on all different axis'. It wasn't anything I had experienced before. Regardless, I fired the thing up and took it for a drive. I hate to admit it, but the thing drove like hell... just pure racecar. Rough as hell, loud as hell, and not at all suited for street driving. It was bad enough where I had to tell the sales guy that I needed to go get a beer and think it over. I remember sitting with a good, old friend of mine going over everything it would need. And it didn't look bad on paper. It was doable!

This is where the story gets a bit crazy. I negotiated a crazy good deal on the car, I mean who in their right mind would walk into a Tesla dealership and leave in a racecar Viper! Then came time to figure out how to get the car home, as it was sitting on 335 Hoosier slicks and had open sidepipes. The dealership offered $800 to transport it home, and I figured it would be about $250 to get the car out of police impound... so we decided to drive the beast 5 hours from Dallas to Houston! Sounds straight forward right, but the night before, a freaking tornado touched down in the area between the dealership and the freeway... so there I was in a legit race car Viper, covered in stickers, belching open sidepipes, just crawling past police directing traffic through the tornado damaged streets. It was absolutely crazy how we didn't end up in jail that day. After bringing the car home I sold my home built racecar Mustang in two days and haven't looked back since.

Anyway, another bit of crazy back story on the car is the original owner was a NASCAR driver from the 60's! Dick Turner didn't have a long career in NASCAR, but he's a badass in my book. He bought this Viper brand new and turned it into a racecar from the start. The car was raced in SCCA road racing and won 13 events! Coincidentally, one of my first autocross events was at a venue in California called the Altamant Speedway back in the early 2000's, which likely was owned by Dick Turner at the time!

Currently the car is being raced full time in SCCA autocross. It's had a long two years of development and is right at the cusp of being a nationally competitive car in it's class. There's a real chance that I can take this car to SCCA Nationals and be the very first Viper to win a CAM championship. Pretty exciting stuff. I post regular updates on Instagram @pro_tour_viper_gts , and on Facebook under my name Andre Illick.

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Thank you for reading this, and I'm glad to be a part of the VOA now.

[Viperenvy]

Welcome!

Great story!!

Make sure to log into the Portal, first page with have sync on lower right. That way your profile will show as a paid member.

Look forward to hearing about your success.

[MO_Better]

Beautiful car - great story - you are going to have a blast with it!

Mark

[Simms]

Congrats and welcome!

[RT SERPENT]

What an excellent story and history! Welcome aboard!

[usmcfieldmp]

Awesome car. Was the tornado is October 2019? I drove out to Tail of the Dragon with some friends one weekend that month and the sirens for that 'nado were going off right as we were approaching I-635 on westbound I-30 in Dallas; almost took 635 as a detour, but glad I didn't as it ended up crossing it a handful of minutes later, iirc.

I'm hoping to get into CAM-S with my car locally, but our Solo schedule has been really lackluster this year. I'm pretty sure TMS stopped letting us run in their bus lot.

[RCVIPER]

Awesome story!! Welcome... I'm sure a lot of us will look forward to seeing how you do, as it gives us another Viper to look forward to seeing it race!! Awesome looking car as well!!

[RacerJRP]

Cool car and cool story. Do you have more pictures of it on the BC forged wheels?

[AIllick]

Welcome!

Great story!!

Make sure to log into the Portal, first page with have sync on lower right. That way your profile will show as a paid member.

Look forward to hearing about your success.

Thank you for the tip.

Awesome car. Was the tornado is October 2019? I drove out to Tail of the Dragon with some friends one weekend that month and the sirens for that 'nado were going off right as we were approaching I-635 on westbound I-30 in Dallas; almost took 635 as a detour, but glad I didn't as it ended up crossing it a handful of minutes later, iirc.

I'm hoping to get into CAM-S with my car locally, but our Solo schedule has been really lackluster this year. I'm pretty sure TMS stopped letting us run in their bus lot.

Yes! Wow that's crazy.

If you have a chance sign up for the Divisional coming up next weekend of the 25th - 27th. It would be epic to have two Vipers in CAM-S! It's two days of racing plus a test and tune on Friday. These champ tour style events are a blast, have you ever been to one? Here's a link: https://www.motorsportreg.com/events...on-solo-768032

Cool car and cool story. Do you have more pictures of it on the BC forged wheels?

There you go!

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[JonB ~ PartsRack]

WORTHY ADDITION INDEED x 2 !

Welcome

[Fatboy 18]

Welcome from the UK love the Car

[13COBRA]

Beautiful car!