Americans have been accused of living in a litigious society, where simply tripping and scraping your knee seems like grounds for a lawsuit. Car companies are especially big targets for greedy lawyers, who see a faceless corporation with a bottomless barrel of cash just ready to be exploited. And while some of these lawsuits are no doubt legit, often time the consequences are farther reaching than you can believe.
KING5 reports that all 93 original Dodge Vipers given to schools and colleges across America have been ordered crushed within the next two weeks. We guess this is what that Viper crushing video from a few months ago was all about.
One of the Vipers was given to South Puget Sound Community College, and this particular car was the fourth pre-production Viper ever built. They claim it is valued at some $250,000, and it was used to teach automotive majors about the finer points of a supercar like the Viper. Chrysler was loaning 93 of these Vipers to various schools and colleges, and the vehicles were never supposed to be driven in public. Some reports state that a couple of Vipers were driven and crashed, resulting in two multi-million dollar lawsuits that has turned the corporate benefactor into the bad guy.
Chrysler-Fiat lawyers told school officials that the Vipers in their possession had to be destroyed in very short order, and efforts by celebrities like Jay Leno to save the cars from the crusher have fallen short. It seems as though these allegedly historic and important Vipers are destined for doom as the result of a lawsuit-happy society, and now a new generation of young mechanics will be denied an incredible opportunity as a result.
What a sad, sad shame.