{"id":20976,"date":"2017-08-12T21:22:45","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T01:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=20976"},"modified":"2017-08-21T21:24:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T01:24:58","slug":"chief-craig-leads-viper-parade-into-pontiac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/chief-craig-leads-viper-parade-into-pontiac","title":{"rendered":"Chief Craig leads Viper parade into Pontiac"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Detroit<\/p>\n<\/div>

Pontiac<\/em>\u00a0– Celebrating its 25th \u2013 and last birthday \u2013 the Dodge Viper got a police escort up Woodward Avenue Saturday to kick off the 2017 Dream Cruise.<\/p>\n

The last Vipers are rolling off the line as Dodge discontinues production of its legendary supercar this fall. Some 200 Vipers \u2013 including yours truly in a 2017 Viper GTC\/ACR – showed up for the party at Dodge\u2019s Connor Avenue plant in Detroit. Then they were led by Detroit Police Chief Craig \u2013 a serious motorhead \u2013 in a black and white Viper police car (a \u201cDodge Law\u201d sign on each door) all the way to Pontiac for the second annual Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge at M1 Concourse car club in Pontiac.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the black and white Viper,\u201d said the chief. \u201cI used to work for the Los Angeles Police Department and they got a black and white Lamborghini. But I\u2019ll be driving real Detroit muscle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Craig led the parade across 8 Mile and up Woodward Avenue with a full police escort \u2013 bringing traffic to a standstill and wowing gawkers along the route. I revved the Viper\u2019s ground-shaking, 645-horse, 8.4-liter V-10 engine for go effect at appreciative passersby.<\/p>\n

The Viper sports a top speed of 177 mph, but we never got out of first gear \u2013 30 mph – on the long trek up Woodard. Fittingly, the parade\u2019s terminus was M1 Concourse and its Champion Motor Spedeway race track. The Viper ACR is M1\u2019s school car and owns the track\u2019s lap record.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n<\/div>

t\u2019s bittersweet,\u201d said Tome Joranowski, 34, a Dodge designer who drove his 2017 Viper in the parade, about the Viper\u2019s last year of production.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the car that got me into the industry. It was the first scale model I built, and it was the first car I drew when I was eight years older.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joranowski is a testament to the Viper\u2019s world-wide appeal. He came to the US from Macedonia to attend the College for Creative Studies as a young man. His goal: to work on the Viper. His GTC badged Viper is a custom model painted in Grigio Silverstone.<\/p>\n

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Post<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0DetroitNews<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Roadkill Nights drag races kicked off Saturday morning at 11 AM, but ran into a glitch when one competitor ran off the end of the 1\/8 mile Woodward dragstrip and crashed into the end barrier.<\/p>\n

No one was hurt but the incident \u2013 the first in the two-year running of Roadkill \u2013 set back the schedule of the drag races. About 150 cars are signed up for the drag runs, each receiving three runs. After their three qualifying runs, the fastest eight cars will compete for top time this evening.<\/p>\n

The evening will also feature celebrity drag racing \u2013 including NHRA Top Fuel female star Leah Pritchett \u2013 at 6.15 PM in Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcats. They are also expected to drag race the 840-horsepower SRT Demon for the first time also.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pontiac\u00a0– Celebrating its 25th \u2013 and last birthday \u2013 the Dodge Viper got a police escort up Woodward Avenue Saturday to kick off the 2017 Dream Cruise. The last Vipers are rolling off the line as Dodge discontinues production of its legendary supercar this fall. Some 200 Vipers \u2013 including yours truly in a 2017 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20977,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20976\/revisions\/20977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}