Sadly, Dodge doesn’t make the Viper anymore. Up until it ended production in 2017, America’s brash supercar was one of the few places you could find a naturally aspirated V10 engine. Now, amazingly, one of those V10 engines is up for sale and its never been used.
A listing on Bring A Trailer has a brand new 8.0-liter V10 crate engine from a first generation Viper. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering how the hell a Viper V10 went unused. It seems that Dodge made a limited number of V10 crate engines as replacements if owners needed them. This particular engine has a strange backstory behind it as well.
Apparently, the engine was mistakenly ordered by a Chrysler dealer’s parts department in 1996. The employee placing the order meant to order a bottle of red touch up paint. When inputting the part number, they made a mistake on a single digit. That single digit was enough to place the order for the Viper V10.
The engine itself has never been used or placed in any vehicle. It’s so new that even things like passages and throttle bodies have caps and there’s still cardboard on the exhaust manifold outlets. As of this writing, there’s just over three hours left on the auction with the highest bid sitting at $8,500.
Someone should definitely buy this engine and do something cool with it. Put it in a Charger or stuff it into a Neon or a Miata or something. Unfortunately it looks like nothing like that will be done any time soon as it seems like this engine will continue to be flipped. This current auction is the second time in just over a year this engine has been sold. The current seller bought the engine in July 2023 for $16,000. Why they’re selling it again and not doing anything cool with it is beyond me.
