The Petersen Automotive Museum recently gathered a good number of supercars, sports cars, and exotic cars and raced them against each other in different configurations. Joining that fantastic company was Doug DeMuro who hosted some of the drag races and talked more about the vehicles in front of the camera. In the newest episode of the online series, two of the greatest production cars in history meet in a head-to-head speed battle.
What we have here is a Dodge Viper competing against a Ferrari F40 in a 1990s supercar showdown. A good portion of the video is dedicated to the technical specifications of the two models and we also get to learn more about the history of how the Viper was designed as a concept car but got massive support and was turned into a production vehicle following a huge investment. We are here for the performance numbers, though.
Gallery: Ferrari F40 Mega Gallery
The Viper featured in this video is from the earliest assembled examples and has a V10 engine that generates 400 horsepower at 4,600 rpm and 465 pound-feet of torque at 3,600 rpm. This is the least powerful of all Viper versions but it is still good enough for a 0-60 miles per hour sprint in around 4.2 seconds. The maximum speed is around 165 mph.
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Against it, the Ferrari F40 puts to use a very different mill. Instead of a giant naturally aspirated V10, the Italian supercar uses a 2.9-liter twin-turbo V8 with 477 hp in US specification. A five-speed manual gearbox is responsible for channeling that output to the rear wheels for a 0-60 mph sprint in around 4.2 seconds.
To make things even better, DeMuro also introduces a red Acura NSX, which has a very different concept compared to the Viper and F40. Does it still have what it takes to compete against two of the most impressive performance machines in the history of the automotive industry? Considering that even a Mercedes E450 All-Terrain is a proper rival for the F40 in a standing-start race, everything is possible.
