HAS SUPERFAST MATT CREATED THE BEST LIFTED STREETCAR PROJECT YET WITH HIS OFF-ROAD DODGE VIPER?
There have been so many off-road versions of regular streetcars popping up lately that when we see them, we take a closer look. It’s become something of an obsession for us here at SXdrv. Of course, creating off-road versions of street cars isn’t something new, but the amount of projects is definitely on the rise. These days there is clearly a renewed interest in doing projects like this, and it’s linked to the massive publicity that surrounds cars like this that have been created at a manufacturer level - mainly from the likes of Porsche who created an all-new 911 Dakar that was based on the latest incarnation of the 911 Porsche. The German automakers based their new-school creation on a classic 911 Porsche that raced in the famed Paris-Dakar back when your grandad was still sending pigeons with love letters to your grandma. Seeing the same gap in the market for these strange cars, Italian automaker Lamborghini also joined in the festivities and created its own lifter streetcar. In the case of the Italians, the base for one of these cars was also a supercar in the form of the popular Huracán. The result was an uncharacteristically high Huracán with all the relevant cladding, underbody protection and tyres usually reserved for legit 4x4 cars, and they called it the Sterrato. Great name, it basically translates to ‘dirt road’. One of these aftermarket builds that we recently drooled over came from well-known YouTuber Adam LZ who decided that his version of a lifted streetcar should be based on the timeless and iconic Nissan GT-R R32, and he called it the Nissan R32 GT-R Safari. Now you’d be forgiven for thinking that a lifted and off-road outfitted classic JDM car would be something out of a bad dream, but it’s ok to be wrong. The end result is awesome, and it's refreshing to see one that doesn’t feature all the usual mods and styling cues. We just came across a new lifted car project, and it’s one we never thought we’d see. We’re happy we did see it though because it’s just as cool.
This completely bonkers build comes from Matt Brown who owns the popular YouTube channel, Superfast Matt. The man has a few weird projects on the go, but the one he’s been the most involved with lately is a project to get an iconic Dode Viper ready for ripping up sand and gravel roads. With such a long, low and flat car, it was a rather large undertaking. There are two ways of doing these kinds of jobs, both aren’t easy though. One way is to swap a car’s body onto the underpinnings of something that’s already suited to rough terrain, and the other is to chop and change and retrofit and create new components to lift the original body on the original chassis. Matt, who narrates the video with the coolest dry sense of humour, chose the latter. He put together a full build series on the project, and if you watch the progress it’s been quite a had-fought project. One of the biggest hurdles was how to get the power to the rear wheels. With the chassis being lifted so high, the angle of the propshaft to the diff means that it would become a weak spot, especially with something like 800 Nm of torque in the mix. One hard acceleration would see the couplings disintegrate. After some serious design work in MS Paint, the solution was to tilt the rear of the engine slightly downward. As you can imagine, this is something that is hard to do and would also necessitate some work on how the oil travels around the engine because too much tilt would leave the front of the monstrous V10 powerplant a little less lubricated than desired. The video below summarises a lot of the project, showing off a bunch of the main and hardest jobs that needed to be done, and by the end of it, we get to see the lifted Dodge Viper V10 on the streets for a decent test drive. The car as it stands looks awesome and is a fair bit higher than the other projects we’ve seen. This leads us to believe it will have better off-road capabilities, but we’ll have to wait for an updated video to see if we’re right. What we actually need is for someone to assemble all these amazing lifted projects and have them complete a series of tasks to see which is the boss, but the test simply must include a 911 Safari and a Huracán Sterrato. What do you reckon?
Take a look at the YouTube video that details the trials and tribulations involved with lifting an iconic V10 Dodge Viper so that it's suited to off-road driving and slaying gravel and sand roads. It's another ambitious project that makes us want to chase the SXdrv boss into getting his Mk1 Audi TT off-road project on the go: The Off-Road Viper Is On The Road | Superfast Matt
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