Auburn Hills, Michigan - Chrysler has been stung by their high end vehicle the 2014 SRT Viper which has turns out to be selling poorly. The 8 cylinder 5-speed automatic vehicle retails between a $44,900 and $48,900 starting price. Its fuel economy is an anemic 14 mpg in the city and 23 mpg highway for a combined 17 mpg. The average person buying this car can also expect to pay $5,500 more in fuel costs over the average fuel economy of the car over a five year period. The automaker has now announced that it has halted production of the car for two months to reduce their inventory. The car is selling poorly.

Just how poorly is it selling? Well, according to their newly released sales report, the automaker has sold only 91 Vipers through the end of February. News of the suspended production will result if 91 autoworkers being "surplused" IE laid off at the Viper's manufacturing plant in Detroit. Production will cease staring on April 14 and is set to resume on June 23. As per the weekly newspaper Automotive News, based in Detroit, Chrysler has 756 Vipers in inventory. Using the current demand for the car, it will take dealerships 412 days to move the existing supply. This casts a shadow of doubt as to what a roughly 70-day halt in production will accomplish given that by June 23, there will remain nearly a one-year time frame before the 2014 inventory is sold.

However, this past winter has been unseasonably cold and severe. There is legitimate reason to believe that with warmer weather, sales will improve. However, the Viper's chief competitor, the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, which sells for several thousand dollars more than the Viper, sold 4,699 units during the same time frame.

Source material:
http://www.edmunds.com/car-news/chrysler-halts-production-of-2014-srt-viper-for-two-months.html