Although the SRT brand has been folded back under the Dodge name, the Viper will continue to wear its SRT badge…for now.

Since the new generation of Viper went on sale in 2013, it has been a standalone SRT vehicle, but its identity has always been a bit confusing. That’s because the vehicle identification number (VIN) of each Viper sold indicates that it is a Dodge. What’s more, if Dodge brand head Tim Kuniskis decides he wants the Viper to once again wear the Dodge logo, he can make that happen at anytime.

Perhaps the largest sticking point for keeping the Viper an SRT vehicle is the $25,000 that dealers had to pay for the right to sell the car. If it is rebadged as a Dodge, the company will have to decide whether or not every Dodge dealer can stock the Viper, or if the fee will continue on the same.

“I think the SRT brand is a natural extension of Dodge as we currently frame Dodge. Dodge is a performance brand; it needs to have SRT,” said Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne.

When asked about which brand will sell the Viper, Marchionne said that it isn’t important. “It will be a Viper,” he said. “The fangs will always be there.”

Was previously called the SRT Viper GTS-R

Following the announcement that the SRT brand will become part of Dodge, the company has renamed the SRT Viper GTS-R the Dodge Viper SRT GTS-R.

Besides the new name, the cars have been equipped with a red and white livery that features Dodge badging on the windshield and front quarter panels.

According to SRT Motorsports CEO Ralph Gilles, “We are honoring the racing history of the Dodge Viper by returning to its classic colors as we are in the midst of celebrating the Dodge brand’s 100th anniversary and 100 years of American performance." He went on to say "The new livery not only brings back this classic look but also enables us to continue to connect our Viper racing program to its spirited racing heritage.”

The Dodge Viper will celebrate its return to the track on June 27th when two Viper SRT GTS-Rs will compete at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen.

Dodge Viper returns as company unveils the Dodge Viper SRT GTS-R

Chrysler has restarted Dodge Viper SRT production after a two-month hiatus caused by an accumulation of unsold examples. Production was halted earlier this year on April 14 at the Conner Avenue Assembly Plant in Detroit, with at least 91 hourly workers being laid off as dealerships attempted to bring inventory down from a collective 756 available nationwide as of March 1, 2014.

The 756 cars that sat unsold at the beginning of March represented a 412 day supply -- enough Vipers for 14 months -- and the pace of sales during the months of January and February averaged fewer than two cars per day.

The slow sales pace has been blamed on an long winter by some, but it's worth noting that the new Chevrolet Corvette recorded 2,261 sales in January 2014 and 2,438 sales the following month. The Dodge Viper, of course, is a much more niche vehicle despite the frequent comparisons between the two, so the pace of production and the availability of inventory could not have allowed the Viper to outpace the Corvette in sales for those two months, to be fair.

The restart of production will be a welcome sign for the Viper, whose production had already been sliced by a third in October 2013 for the same reasons as during this latest hiatus. Before October 2013, Chrysler had been building an average of nine Vipers per day, but production was expected to come down to an average of six examples per day after those cuts.

Update: according to a report from Autoblog, production was halted once again for a period of two weeks after the Viper returned to the production line on June 23. The earliest that production is expected to restart now is July 21.

Stopped for two weeks

Dodge has announced production of the 2014 SRT Viper has been halted once again amid decreasing sales.

It was only a couple of days ago when we found out production of the 2014 SRT Viper was resumed on June 23 after being stopped on April 14. Now, Dodge says the assembly line at Conner Avenue has been stopped once again yesterday and it will restart on July 21. In the first production pause, 91 workers were laid off but now the number has been reduced to 82.

Once the assembly line will restart, the production rate will be the same as before even though there are some risks of creating another inventory surplus. Starting with 2015 model year, the Viper will be sold once again with the Dodge nameplate probably as a method to boost sales since customers would react better to the famous designation.