Dodge Viper worth tens of thousands? Crush it, Chrysler orders.
Dodge Viper was donated to tech center so students could work on it. But Chrysler says the Dodge Viper is outdated and not street legal.
Student Mike Murphy of Yelm, Wash., washes the one-of-a-kind, $250,000 Dodge Viper SRT in the automotive shop at South Puget Sound Community College in Tumwater, Wash., earlier this month. Chrysler has ordered its entire collection of educational Vipers – believed to be about 93 cars, worth tens of millions of dollars – to be crushed.
Tony Overman/The Olympian/AP/File
OLEY, Pa.
Chrysler has told a trade school in eastern Pennsylvania that it must destroy one of its prized cars, a 1996 Dodge Viper GTS.
The Reading Eagle said (http://bit.ly/O8DOlN) the car was donated to the Berks Career and Technology Center in 1999 and hundreds of students have worked on it since then.
But there was a catch: Chrysler maintained ownership and the school would be required to destroy the muscle car when the automaker decided the time had come.
Berks Career and Technology Center director Robert Lees said the Bern Township school got the crushing news in January.
The automaker said the equipment on the cars is outdated, they're not street-legal and they're not historically significant.
Lees said Chrysler requires photos or video of the car being crushed as proof.