NJ Steves Pit Viper Revival

[njsteve]

Holy Crapoly, I wound up falling down a rabbit hole, here. I just did a random search of prior listed 1993's on Bring a Trailer, ebay, google, etc. I found 35 of them ranging from Vin 55 (a January 93 built, heavily modified, Hennessey car) to VIN 1040 (which is 15 cars from the last 93 VIN#1055) of the total 1,043 cars built in 1993.

It seems that Dodge obviously did not build the cars in VIN order. (something I now remember from seeing cars on the line).

I made a spread sheet with all sorts of variables, including one or two-piece manifolds, fender or windshield mounted antenna, notched fuel filler lid or quarter panel, "Viper" or "R/T-10" labeled calipers, yellow mark on the temp gauge or not, battery under the trunk or fender. I also noted the date of manufacture from the door tag when available in the listing.

How is this for crazyness: the earliest one-piece manifold I found was VIN 500 built in July 1993. And the latest two-piece manifold car was 903 built in May 1993.

So it looks like there was a jumble of various previously VIN-assigned cars with high numbers/low numbers being built in random order during the model year - maybe due to defects or parts availability? Who knows, but here is what I found:

Do you notice the interesting trends? The carry-over 1992 style, two-piece exhaust manifold/frame-mounted mufflers are always present in conjunction with a fender-mounted antenna, trunk mounted battery, and round fuel filler lid with the thumb depression in the quarter panel.