Watch this second generation Dodge Viper take on a modern Challenger in a quarter-mile drag race.

We miss the Viper. Something about an enormous naturally-aspirated engine pushing a tiny car down a drag strip just seems so pure and wholesome. That, and ever since the Viper went out of production, carmakers have gotten into their heads that a 7.3-L engine is “big.”

The Viper scoffs at your 7.3-L engine with an 8.0-L engine of its own!

From one of the largest displacement engines ever shoved under the hood of a production car came 450 hp and 490 lb-ft. That improved with later generations, eventually surpassing 600 horsepower from an enormous 8.4-L engine on the 2013 Viper. But back in 1998, the Viper was still a reasonable car with an unreasonably large engine.

Power was routed through a 6-speed manual to the rear wheels, with zero to sixty taking 4-seconds in the hands of an experienced driver. Quarter-mile time was around 12.2 seconds.

On the other side of the median is a Dodge Challenger R/T 392. Under the hood is a 6.4-L HEMI V8 with 485 hp and 476 lb-ft of torque. This beats our old Viper, but keep in mind that the Viper weighs 1,000 lbs less than the Challenger.

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Zero to sixty is done in 4.3 seconds on its way to quarter-mile times in the 13-second range.

On paper, the Viper is a clear winner. But whenever you add a manual transmission into the mix there’s always that possibility of driver error.

Thankfully, this Viper driver knew what they were doing. A good start leads to a great quarter-mile time of 12.17 seconds at 124 mph--beating the time listed on ZeroToSixty.com. The Challenger, on the other hand, seemed to get a good start but then gave up when the Viper started to pull ahead, finishing in 13.96 seconds at 101.61 mph.

If only they still made the Viper. Ah well--maybe one day a different carmaker will resurrect the name and give it the biggest engine we've ever seen. Until then, we'll just watch it beat modern muscle cars like it ain't no thang.

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