---
title: '1998 Dodge Viper GTS: Regular Car Reviews'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=GLLmF5DpVpA'
video_id: 'GLLmF5DpVpA'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 1360
---

# 1998 Dodge Viper GTS: Regular Car Reviews

> Source: [1998 Dodge Viper GTS: Regular Car Reviews](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GLLmF5DpVpA)

## Summary

William Sabers reviews the 1998 Dodge Viper GTS, highlighting its raw, unassisted driving experience, cultural impact, and philosophical comparison with the Cybertruck. He argues that the Viper's hostility to the driver makes it uniquely rewarding.

### Key Points

- **Viper Specifications** [04:42] — The second-gen Dodge Viper features an 8.0L V10 engine producing 450 hp at 5,200 RPM and 490 lb-ft at 3,700 RPM.
- **No Electronic Assists** [05:47] — The Gen 2 Viper has no traction control, no ABS, and no stability control, relying entirely on driver skill.
- **Object-Oriented Ontology** [10:05] — Sabers applies object-oriented ontology, arguing the Viper and Cybertruck exist independently of human perception, behaving as if they don't need us.
- **Prohibitively Expensive Parts** [17:45] — The Viper's headlight enclosures cost $4,000 each, and finding aftermarket parts is extremely difficult, making ownership risky.
- **Legacy as a Bookmark** [22:08] — The second-gen Viper GTS is called a 'save point' and a 'bookmark' in automotive history, symbolizing Chrysler's former risk-taking glory.

### Conclusion

The 1998 Dodge Viper GTS exemplifies a bygone era of automotive risk-taking where driver skill mattered more than electronic aids. It remains a raw, unfiltered symbol of American performance that continues to captivate enthusiasts.

## Transcript

Oh, that's how fast I was going. It is a
smooth car.
>> It is.
>> Yeah.
>> You You don't notice.
>> YEAH.
MY name is William Saber.
I WEAR A BANDANA everywhere I go. I GOT
A BACK TATTOO that says YOUR MOM. MY
FAVORITE DRINK IS DR. Pepper and Uo.
I GOT BANNED FROM PHILADELPHIA City Hall
after trying to get to the top of the
roof to jerk off William PENN AND I
DRIVE A 1998
Dodge Viper GTS.
My middle name
is important.
When I was in the sixth grade, I SLEPT
OVER AT Mike Fiman's house and he had to
go to services the next MORNING AND THE
CONSISTRY or whatever asked me to leave
BECAUSE I WALKED INTO THE SYNAGOGUE like
this.
Guess what else I learned to do in the
sixth grade?
Yeah, I learned to swallow air and belch
on command. I still do it. I'm 44. Can I
get
Don't click away.
Give me extra.
My name's
There it is. And I don't hold my farts
in when I have sweaty sex WITH YOUR MOM.
THEN I PEEL OUT OF A ranch house
driveway in my Dodge Viper. Benson and
hedges hanging from my lips cuz I'm
classy and nookie by Limp Biscuit on the
stereo.
Invite me to your wedding. I'm going to
do this.
I'll be out in the parking lot revving a
Dodge Viper and doing Gravity Bong hits
with your cousins. Today's episode of
Regular Car Reviews is sponsored by
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LastFit website. Thank you. We rag on
Chrysler, Dodge, Stalantis with good
reason. Most of what they make, Jeeps
included, is junk. Their cars are poorly
built unreliable gremlinaden credit
ruining money pits. They're like a guy
at a bowling alley who picks up a 14lb
ball with two hands, swaggers up to the
line, and goes, "COME
and then chucks the alleyball down the
lane." But every once in a while,
William important Saber gets a strike
and then struts like Travolta in the
opening credits of Saturday Night Fever
back to his Michelob Ultra. And the
second gen Dodge Viper is an 8 L V10
sports car making 450 horsepower at
5,200 RPM and 490 lb feet at 3,700 RPM.
Uh, excuse me. My name is private equity
Peter Merkel and I am a freshman at
Princeton University and my M4 makes
that. My dad golfs with Chris Christie
and my grandpa told Baduire that he
should probably do that thing. 450
horsepower and 490 lb feet of torque
sounds like nothing in 2026 when any EV
worth its lithium has to make at least
1,000 horsepower to be special. But not
all horsepowers are made equal. 1,000
horsepower EVs or a 500 horsepower BMW
are techladen machines that are
permanently locked in the tutorial
level. You can't [ __ ] up. Stability
control, traction control, torque
vectoring, collision mitigation,
autofaladial lanekeeping, liza Minnelli
hand jobs, mountable center consoles,
vent ducks filled with dried [ __ ] You
can't make a mistake in them. But the
Gen 2 Viper has no assists, not even
anti-lock brakes. You have full power
all the time. And the only thing keeping
this car in check is the same sense of
self-preservation that governs your ego.
Gen 2 Viper. Good luck, chuckle nuts.
And this lack of safety is even funnier
because the Gen 1 Viper didn't have
driver's aids either. And you'd think
that Dodge would have been like, "Oh,
that weird experiment that the Viper is
is actually selling and it's selling
enough to necessitate another
generation. Well, we better modernize
it." But no, this is dodge. They just
grabbed their favorite metal straw and
went,
"YES, WE'RE DOING IT AGAIN."
Feeling good. Feeling a bit of warmth.
Feeling fantastic. Here's what we're
going to do. More bulges, more power,
and and
that's it. What? What? Who are you and
what department do you what? Oh. Oh. Oh,
fine. Okay, sure. Air conditioning.
We'll give it air conditioning. You want
real glass in the windows?
Fine. But that's it, man. I'm sick of
you guys. This thing is pretty much a
kit car still. It just got updated
styling, more power out of the V10, and
that's it. 1998 Dodge Viper GTS. The
official car of weekend warriors and
ragtop shirts shouting no mercy as they
plank in the middle of the freeway area.
This car is a joy to drive. It's
expensive.
Does this thing drink. The funny thing
is the Corvettes of the same year,
especially the C5s once they came out,
they did not get hit with the gas
guzzler tax because Corvettes competitor
this car sort of had very tall fifth and
sixth gears. They could get 30 m a
gallon if you babyed them. They were
geared nice and nice and high at the end
for cruising. The Viper. No. No. This
thing is geared as if it's meant to be
on a track, but it is so sketchy. This
thing did get hit with the gas guzzler
tax. Did the buyers care? No, cuz it's
awesome. And everybody's looking at you.
While we were filming this, there were
people who came up and didn't even know
what it was. There's nothing that looks
like this. Nothing is wild. Nothing is
eye-catching. The styling is perpetually
aggressive, but in that weird welcoming
way. I suppose because it lacks the
angular fake aggressiveness that soaked
the 201s. Oh, this is 1998. Try to find
a right angle on the car. No. Sensual
curves. True beauty is non-binary. the
perfect mix of masculine and feminine
together doing deadlifts. There are very
few, and this is for the straight people
out there, cars that are very fast,
muscular, and strong
that also attract females, and this is
one of them. Now, on the outside, you
get on the inside of a Viper. Oo, it's
your shoulders are squished together,
your feet are off to the side, it gets
you, the windows aren't enough. You need
to have the air conditioner on and the
windows down. There is just heat pouring
out of the engine. Heat pouring out of
the transmission. You're sitting next to
the transmission, not on top of it. You
can't see out the sides. The hood bulges
are up to your eyes. It's like a woman
with big megalodons. Just all pushed up
to the bottom of her nose trying to
attire shoes. You don't know where the
front of this car ends. And good luck
trying to see out the back. But it's
joyous. Every gear change is an
affirmation to acceleration and the
upcoming future. So let's get into some
literary theory. So all right class,
today we're going to be talking about
objectoriented
onthology. Objectoriented onthology.
Write it down in your notebooks, please.
This theory suggests that humans are not
a privileged class. And by privileged
class I mean not privileged at all in
the hierarchy of all objects in the
known universe. Humans according to
object-oriented onthology are just
another type of object among countless
other objects both living and
non-living. And we all have equal value
because all things have a material
reality and independent worth outside of
human perception and use. Sort of think
of this as like scrap prices. We are
just the sum of the things that make us
up. You may have a car that's just
oozing sentimental value, but to a
scrapper it's $350 in metal. As Rocky
said to Grace in the Hail Mary book,
"You are leaky space blob." It's sort of
an answer to the question of whether or
not a tree can fall in the woods if a
person isn't around to hear it. Well, of
course it can because a tree has an
independent relationship with the world
and its surroundings that we don't see.
Now, it might seem weird to compare the
two, but but the Dodge Viper is the
Mario to the Cybert truck's Wario. And
together they make a great case for
objectoriented
ontology. Both the Cybert truck and the
Viper are the same. Both are
uncomfortable. Both are needlessly
expensive. Both are aggressively
overpowered. Both are uncomfortable on
the inside, poor visibility looking
outside, and are completely impractical
and expensive. And by the way, they're
both poorly built. Even Dodge Vipers,
yes, have body lines that don't line up
and never will. On the one hand, these
cars wouldn't have any use if humans
disappeared tomorrow. But on the other
hand, they would still have interactions
with time and the environment and with
the objects they contain. They will
rust, they will degrade, and they will
become home to squirrels and birds. So,
a car might need humans to maintain its
function, but not its existence. In that
sense, the Viper and the Cybertruck
might just be the only two cars we can
think of that behave as if they don't
need us. And they do this by being
straight up hostile to the driver's
existence. The Cybertruck doesn't care
if you enjoy driving it, while the Viper
doesn't care if you can even understand
how. And yet, when faced with choosing
between these two cars that force you to
adapt to their independent qualities,
who do you think I'm choosing? Come on.
I'm picking a second gen Dodge Viper GTS
every single time because the Viper may
be chaotic, but I'll never not be able
to enjoy driving it, even if the car
never trusts me to actually do it. 1998
Dodge Viper GTS. When I die, scatter my
ashes on the tail of the dragon. This is
a loud, fast, power- hungry, fuel
thirsty car that doesn't even make sense
on the track. And it displaces 8 L of
American Venom.
And when you hear it ex when you hear
its exhaust screaming through a gated
community of weepy snot bubbling hoa
belly who complain anytime someone mows
a lawn earlier than noon, you'll know
that only one of two things has
happened. Either your neighbor's son
Kyle got an early parole or one of the
neighborhood dads has had a new
self-care ritual that involves edging
the grim reaper. Let me put it this way.
Speed you can control feels different
than speed you can't. And the Dodge
Viper requires you to know what the hell
you're doing because it's not going to
compensate for your shortcomings in the
way all modern performance cars will.
Let me reiterate, there's no traction
control or ABS here. So, if you push
this car past its limit, you will not be
able to recover unless you are a very
skilled driver. And by that, I mean that
you have already taken a Viper past the
limits of adhesion on a track and know
what this is going to do. But, but
that's also why the GTS is so
compelling. It's like a hyper
motorcycle. You look at it and realize
you're looking at greatness.
But you're also looking at exclusion.
For our skiers and snowboarders up
there, remember the first time you gazed
over the edge of a true double black?
Not an east coast double black, you
know, maybe Killington, but west coast
double black or Utah, Colorado. Oh,
and you see the horizon. You look down
and down. Oh, I thought I was skilled.
The skill pit goes deeper. The Viper
utilizes its aggression in a more
thoughtful way than something like the
Cyber Truck. It maximizes driver
influence rather than minimizing it. A
drive that requires track day focus is
more rewarding than showing up to a
place without any memory of the drive
that got you there. And there's also
something to to be said for this design
because while both cars have a sort of
offputtingly edgy appearance, the Viper
feels a lot less tryh hard. Right? If
the Cybert truck is a goth loner who
acts like they're above the cool kids
while desperately craving their
validation, like the creator of this car
desperately wants our validation. Guess
what? No amount of money buys coolness.
No amount of money buys hip. Money does
not equal popularity. It never will.
You're a loser if you think so. But the
Viper is the cool kid who couldn't
possibly care less about whether anybody
likes him or not. He's got pit vipers on
and he's owning them. It's effortless
cool that's reinforced through a
combination of performance and aura. The
Viper is doing its own thing and doesn't
care if you don't care to watch. It's an
outsider artist. And for that, I love
Dodge that kept this car going. There
are few cars that were built for the
love of the game, and this is one of
them. You buy a Dodge Viper when you
realize you haven't known peace since
age 10. And chaos is what feels most
like home. The type of kids who played
chicken with oncoming trains grew up and
bought Dodge Vipers. After all, nothing
reaffirms life like a car that doesn't
care if you live or die. 1998 Dodge
Viper GTS skill issue. But even while I
enjoy this car eternally, chat, I can't
see myself ever wanting to own one. And
the biggest reason is how much money you
risk just to keep this thing on the
road. Aside from keeping up with basic
maintenance, uh you have to pray stuff
doesn't break since stock parts on
Vipers are expensive and difficult to
find. It got to the point where our
volunteer Matt just went out and bought
aftermarket wheels and tires because
they were cheaper than the stock tires
and took the side markers off an old
utility truck when they needed a
replacement. And now one of the
headlights is cracked and Matt doesn't
have many options since these headlights
were made in fairly low volumes. And
there are no aftermarket options for
these headlight enclosures. At least not
in 2026. According to Matt, if you want
a new headlight enclosure for a second
gen Viper, guess what? $4,000
a piece. So it has a cracked headlight
enclosure. I don't blame him. Crack
doesn't go all the way through. and he's
not getting a fix it ticket. But even if
it didn't have any of these problems,
it's still a mechanically absurd car in
a lot of ways. It has electric door
handles, yet there's no way to open the
rear hatch from inside the car. It has
cold and hot air, but only heat comes
out of the lower vents, and only cold
air comes out of the top vents, which
Matt tells us that's from factory. Dodge
said this thing will do 20 on the
highway. Matt says it's closer to eight
miles per gallon city and
13 highway.
He says he was able to e this thing to
18 m gallon highway in sixth gear while
staying to the 65 mph speed limit. And I
know who who cares about fuel economy in
a Viper. The GTS wasn't cheap in its
heyday. uh 1998 it MSRPD for $66,000
which adjusted for inflation to 2026 is
$130,000.
That's a lot to pay for a frictionless
majestic 1990s Mopar pile of garbage.
However, you can also kind of understand
it since the GTS was such a low volume
car. It was handbuilt by small teams for
limited runs which separated it from
anything else on the road. There is
there was nothing like this and there
will be nothing like this. Oh, in
addition to air conditioning and real
glass for the side windows, this was the
first Viper to get airbags. And because
this is a pre2000 Viper, you also get
forged pistons. This car represents a
time when Chrysler used to be with it in
a very Abe Simpson way. Chrysler used to
knew what it was. They took risks in the
way athletes take peeds without any
thought to who might see them do it or
how it might impact their future earning
potential. And the world loved them for
it. Chrysler was 1998 Mark Maguire
drilling homers all the way back to the
cheap seats. They were making these
kinds of cars because people responded
to these types of cars. And people
responded to them because Chrysler cared
about making them fun. But as with just
any product that was halfway decent in
the9s, Chrysler fell out of touch with
what people wanted from them and has
become something unrecognizable. They're
the automotive equivalent of Gwen
Stefani. They're saving face these days
by cutting costs to the bone, but all
that does is leave their current
customer base saltier than target
popcorn. People still like Jeeps and
people still like Chargers and
Challengers, but it seems like the Mopar
scene is defending your choice. It's
like buying a Sega Genesis too late and
realizing it's all over, man. And I'm
not saying the answer in 2026 is for
Chrysler to make something like this
again. I'm not entirely convinced they
can. Stalantis build quality is so far
down the toilet, it's practically in the
Mushroom Kingdom. Maybe they'd luck into
something great. Or maybe they'd build
something that looks fun but sputters
like a dying can of whipped cream. I
don't know. A car like a Dodge Viper
doesn't make sense today. But that
hasn't stopped it from rising in value
on the used market because Chrysler was
just open to throwing caution to the
wind and in the process ended up
creating a reference point to their
former greatness. Even within the Viper
line, the second gen Dodge Viper GTS is
the save point. It's the bookmark slid
between the pages of automotive history.
And even if Stalantis is around for
another 100 years,
as long as a single Viper is still in
existence, as long as a single Viper is
still on the road, its individuality
will survive the company that made it.
Just ask Minnie.