The Dodge Viper was always a scary thing. It launched in 1992 as a phallic fiberglass wrapper for a massive V10 engine and a six-speed transmission driving the rear wheels. There was no traction control, no airbags, and no ABS. Heck, there were no exterior door handles. A coffin on wheels with 400 horsepower.
The sheer intensity of the Viper made contemporary muscle cars look like ponies, with their creature comforts and titchy V8s. Over the years, the car earned itself a reputation as a bit of a widowmaker. Having all that power on tap with no restraints too often ends in tears. A search for Dodge Viper crashes will turn up a cavalcade of twisted metal, with lives tragically lost along the way.
The Viper was a super-powerful car that could prove fatal for an unprepared driver. So, what better car could there be to offer up to the general public as the ultimate jackpot on The Price Is Right? And what would become of the unsuspecting player who went home with a Viper just waiting to strike? We spoke to one winner and got many answers, though more questions remain.
The First Viper Winner
A man named Peter entered the history books when he appeared on The Price is Right in 2002. It was the golden age of the show, with Bob Barker presiding over the festivities. As the show began in earnest, Peter had the closest bid on a laptop computer, which gained him entry to the first pricing game. He’d be playing Golden Road. Up for grabs was a chaise lounge and a Yamaha WaveRunner jet ski. Oh, and a Dodge Viper, valued at over $74,000.
Peter was an enthusiastic player, wearing a shirt emblazoned with hand-written messages and pumping his fists in adulation. He guessed the correct price of the car—$74,570—and quite literally began jumping for joy. He was, according to my research, the first person to win a Viper on the show.
“You’ve done it! Congratulations! Drive carefully.” – Bob Barker
The win catapulted Peter up the charts of the biggest winners on The Price is Right. Fans keep exhaustive statistics on the show, going as far as noting where Bob Barker entered the show in any given episode (on Peter’s episode, he came in through the audience). The Viper made Peter the biggest single-prize winner in the show’s history, with his total haul coming in at $85,949 worth of prizes. At the time, that made him the third biggest winner ever in total on the show, behind Angela and Danielle who played on October 14, 1993 and January 13, 1992, respectively. Today, he’s the 52nd biggest winner, with inflation significantly boosting prize amounts over the years.
My brain itched with questions, and based on the YouTube comments, I wasn’t the only one. Most consist of people bickering about the vagaries of tax law in respect to game show prizes. One viewer swears that Barker gave away the game by holding the right number in position over the price tag. But my question was more personal—what happened to Peter and the Viper after the cameras stopped rolling?
Calling Peter up for a chat would answer all my questions, but alas, it wasn’t to be. All I had was his first name. The announcer in the intro calls out something along the lines of “Peter Mamama, come on down!” Endless searches for variants like Malama, Manama, and Meinama turned up nothing. Nor did the credits offer any hope.
Did Peter climb behind the wheel of the vicious, powerful first-gen Viper? What did he make of the powerful V10 engine? Perhaps he found a new addiction to gasoline and speed, wielding the Viper like the automotive equivalent of a berserker’s broadsword. Or perhaps, he’d found it all too much, and only used it gently on weekends. Or, perhaps the saddest answer, he’d never driven it at all, maybe due to those brutal gift taxes we’ve all heard so much about.
We have only a tiny clue. One commenter claimed to have known Peter, and stated that he’d kept the car for a few years before he sold it. Another stated that their father worked with Peter, without providing any relevant information.
I reached out to both, to no avail. In any case, assuming both are telling the truth, we know that Peter owned the car for some time, and, at one point, had some kind of gainful employment. If you know Peter, or know of him, let him know we’d love to chat.
There’s Something About Marys
With Peter’s trail having gone cold, I dove back into the archives of data from The Price is Right. I teased out a couple more winners, both named Mary. One took home a yellow Viper, the other, red. Both won later second-generation models, which were modern compared to Peter’s barebones first-gen Viper. Even still, they were imposing machines, with 500 horsepower and still, no traction control.
I watched and rewatched the episodes, looking for clues that could help put me in touch with someone. I dived deep into research and finally turned up a phone number. And just like that, I was talking to Mary, who won a Dodge Viper on September 28, 2006.
Mary won the opening bidding on the game Gold Bars, giving her the opportunity to play Golden Road. She guessed the price of a dinnerware set, then a giant clock.
“Today, we have, at the end of the Golden Road, the most expensive prize ever offered on our daytime show,” crowed Bob Barker. A gorgeous yellow Viper awaited her. She guesses seven as the missing number in the price. Bob teases, stalls for time, then finally pulls the tag. She’s done it—she’s won the Viper. Mary claps and screams with the victory as Bob sends the viewers off to an ad break.
That was eighteen years ago; today, it’s a cool, cloudy afternoon as I speak to Mary about her brilliant win. “I’m pretty sure I just jumped up and down and screamed,” she laughs, speaking of her brilliant win on the show stage.
You might expect that Mary left the set in the yellow Viper seen on screen, but the reality is somewhat different. There are taxes to pay on the winnings [Ed Note: $30 grand according to a story I’ve found online. -DT], and the prizes often come later. Many contestants travel great distances to appear on the show, and it’s not practical for them to try and shoehorn everything into their cabin baggage.
As for the Viper? “It was maybe 3 months,” says Mary. “You have to wait for the show to air. They can’t give you the car until the show has been aired on television.” She also didn’t get the exact car that was seen on screen. “They actually transport the car, they find the one nearest in value to the prize that you won,” she explains. “Mine was yellow on television, but actually they couldn’t find a yellow one in that same price value.” The show called to check that she was happy to accept a black one instead. Mary confirmed, and the Viper was then delivered to a local dealer for her to pick up.
From her first ride, the car made a big impression. “I know the first time I actually got in, you could just hear the car rumble underneath of you … you could feel the power as soon as you turned it over,” she says, with a measure of reverence. “My husband was super excited to be the owner of a Dodge Viper, and he drove it home from the dealership. We were both super thrilled and excited to have the opportunity to drive a Dodge Viper.” She and her husband took turns in the car, with friends and family lining up for rides as well.
By the mid-2000s, the Viper had been out for well over a decade. Even so, it was a major head turner wherever it went, according to Mary. “Everybody around you is looking at you,” she laughs. “You can see it all over their faces, that thrill and excitement.”
She and her husband intended to sell the car, and wanted to keep it as close to brand new as possible. They limited their use to a few fun drives and a date night at a fancy restaurant. “We purposely went down to a fancy area in our neck of the woods,” says Mary. “We used the valet service, and made sure they parked it right outside the restaurants so we could look at it while we were eating dinner.” They enjoyed the car, while preserving its value.
But the big question—did Mary and her husband ever really wring it out? Push the Viper hard? There’s a pause on the line. “Gosh, can I say that to you?” laughs Mary. She’s coy, but it’s clear she enjoyed the car for what it was. “Of course, I mean, it’s a Dodge Viper. I drove it slowly for a Dodge Viper, but fast for any other car,” she chuckles.
She avoided any scary, white-knuckle moments, though, choosing to drive the car with respect and within her own limits. “I would never say that I would let myself get to that point,” says Mary. “I drove in a manner that I felt like I could handle. I knew if I went faster, which the car is capable of going, that I could lose control, and I just didn’t pass that point.”
“We owned it for probably about 6, maybe 8 months,” says Mary. She didn’t drive the car a whole lot during that time, not wanting to increase the mileage too much. “It was a pretty easy process to sell,” she explains. They found someone looking for a car in their exact configuration and offloaded it without issue. Ultimately, it was because the Viper had become key to something altogether more important in her life.
Something Even Better Than A Viper
At the time of Mary’s appearance on The Price Is Right, she and her husband were in the process of adoption. Any family that’s been through it will tell you the process is long and arduous, and often expensive.
“It’s kind of daunting, trying to adopt, so we were taking a break, on vacation,” Mary explains. In doing so, a wonderful opportunity presented itself. “Getting on The Price Is Right was like, my dream, to meet Bob Barker. It was his last season before he retired.”
Scoring the massive prize was just the magic icing on an already wonderful cake.
Winning a Dodge Viper was never in the plan, but Chrysler’s Hail Mary sportscar from the 1990s would help her and her husband build a family. “We sold the car so that we could afford the adoption,” says Mary. Providence smiled, and Mary and her husband would go on to adopt a second child from the same mother, again helped by the proceeds from the car.
“We still wish we owned a Dodge Viper,” says Mary. “We wish we had been able and in a position to keep it.” But ultimately, she loves it more for the greater gift it gave her. “That’s really… if I retell the story, that’s the story for me,” she says. “I love the Dodge Viper, but I really love my babies.” I pretty much teared up at that point.
I’m still hoping to reach out to Peter or the other Mary. I want to know what it was like stepping out of their daily driver and into Dodge’s unleashed V10 weapon. One suspects it either made them instant car fans or scared them half to death on partial throttle.
Today, the same kind of thing can still kind of happen. You could give someone a Tesla Model S Plaid, or a bonkers Ferrari or a C8 Corvette. Any one of those would offer devastatingly quick acceleration, all three sure to be quicker than a 2002 Dodge Viper.
And yet, the Dodge wouldn’t be far behind, and it did it all with a manual gearbox and with only your right foot keeping the tires stuck to the road — plus, with no airbags or ABS. You can still hurt yourself in a modern car, but you’re kind of wearing a parachute made out of computers compared to driving the all-analog Dodge of decades past.
In any case, if your neighbor, town crier, or bailiff won a first-gen Viper, from The Price is Right or otherwise, have them drop me a line. I’d love to know what their experience was like—taxes, tire torture, and all.
Image credits: The Price is Right via YouTube screenshot
A Peter and two Mary’s. I wonder if we can get one Mary to change her name to Paul.
The Bible is full of all sorts of kink.
I won a car once. I was visiting family out of state and their local Italian restaurant was having a 100th anniversary celebration a few weeks later, so they had prize raffle boxes, the grand prize being a brand new Fiat 500. I’m not usually one to enter things like that but my mother-in-law convinced me and even chipped in some money to enter.
A few weeks later, we were back home, and the family said they heard that the winner of the car was from out of state. We thought it was just a coincidence, but sure enough, a few days later we got a call that we were the winners. We rented a car one way, drove down (about 8 hours from home), and let up at the restaurant. They did a photo-op handing over the keys and we were off on our way home.
The initial plan was to sell the car immediately, but we basically fell in love with it on the way home in those 8 hours. What I ended up doing was selling my 7 year old car to my little sister, and used that money to pay for the “W-2G” gambling winnings tax which counted against my federal income. We also had to pay income tax for the state the car was won in. After tax season, because I sold my old car, we basically broke even but with a 7 year newer car!
I drove it as my daily drive for 3 years and then traded it in for the Tesla I had reserved years before that was finally ready. Fiats depreciate like you wouldn’t believe so in the end I only profited under $5k.
Having loved the car so much, I bought another Fiat 500, this time an Abarth, from Cars&Bids and over the past 3 years have been converting it into an ARA stage rally car.
Have you run the Abarth yet at an event? If so, what’s the car number? I’d love to see that in a race some time!
American Rally Association #960, but have not competed yet. I’m elbows deep in suspension problems and due to New England Forest Rally 2024 being canceled for this year, I’m not super rushed but if things work out I’ll do some Gravel Trials (Rallysprint) in NH sometime this year. I do have a build series on YouTube/StalePhish for Angry Egg Rally Car
Oh, a 500, that’s so cool!
Bob really knew how to sell those refried beans…
https://soundcloud.com/geoffrey-ludwig-757540759/the-price-is-right-the-big-banana-extended-version?si=35dde3b48a73425798492b95070c2b1e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
I just thought about how much I’ve spent on the kids so far.
It came to a chilling conclusion that even a Veyron (after tax) won’t cover the bills to raise ONE child.
We have twins. When they were in college, every semester, for 8 semesters, we wrote checks that would have purchased a very nice car, despite them both having scholarships. When they graduated, we were driving a 10 year old 165k mile Odyssey and 6 year old 90k mile Elantra. Fortunately, they’ve both made the investment worthwhile.
We have experience winning a car. It was pretty cool.
We won a K car from Coca Cola in 1981, when they first came out. In those days, you could get glass bottled pop, and you could peel back the plastic liner on the bottle top. If it showed a picture of a K car, you won.
My sister was turning 16, and we just KNEW we were going to win. To the point that I’d grab a Tab, and dump it down the sink, just to get the bottle top.
My dad didn’t believe we won, and we kept it in a little box on the mantle. But, it was a winner, and we met up with the Coca Cola people at the dealership, there was a photo op, etc. Got the picture in the paper and everything.
The car was as bare bones as you could get, except for three features: full width hubcaps, an automatic transmission, and an AM radio. Maybe power steering, but I don’t really remember. Pretty sure it didn’t have power brakes.
I vividly remember my dad opening the hood, and exclaiming “J—s C—-t! The fan is PLASTIC!!!”
My sister was thinking that the car was going to be hers to drive; she asked if we could swap it for another car, like the Dodge 024. IIRC, there was a $2,000.00 difference between the two, and my dad wasn’t about to pay that to get an even smaller car. My sister was really pissed about that. And you do have to pay taxes, but on the other hand, you got a brand new car for a fraction of what a new one would run you.
My folks weren’t going to let my sister drive such a small thing, so may dad drove it, and my sister drove the 1977 Vista Cruiser. I think he really enjoyed driving the car, despite it being far from an Olds wagon…
We ended up keeping that car for about 9 years. The struts kept giving way, and eating up tires, and then the floorboards rusted through. I went over a puddle, and it lifted up the carpet, causing all the dirt and everything to fly about inside the car, so that was the end of that.
This made me laugh so hard. I can picture him telling the dealer they don’t make em like they used to.
Oh wow. Winning a K is quite something
You won the boobie prize.
I know of a guy who won a Honda SUV, a CR-V I think, but ended up getting a Ford Fusion hybrid. He picked it up at some place called…Galpin Ford? Never heard of ’em. ????
Weird name for a dealership. Most likely some two-bit operation out in California. 😉
Not as weird as some of the weirdos they work with. One publicly professes his lust for rust and the other has the most ridiculous hair.
Yeah, but did any of these Vipers have floor mats and a rear bumper applique?
They definitely had California emissions!
Didn’t some game shows offer the cash equivalent of prizes if you didn’t want it or it was impractical (i.e. speed boat if you lived no where near water). Or am I imagining this?
Yes, that’s definitely a thing, makes it easier to pay the taxes, too, since they can just withhold them.
The Price is Right is perhaps a bit unusual in having never offered a cash option for their prizes
I think the cash alternative is usually not equivalent to the MSRP of the grand prize. I remember reading the fine print of a giveaway of a car that was worth about $80,000 and the cash alternative was $50,000. Some giveaways include a cash component WITH the grand prize (say a new car plus $10,000) to help mitigate the tax hit.
Fun story!
Thank you!
My friend’s sister won a camping trailer on The Price is Right a few years ago. They let her opt for a smaller trailer with more features than the one that was on TV. Despite living in an apartment and driving a Corolla, she went with the camper instead of cash. Now my friend has a camper in his driveway that he can use, but has to maintain. His sister hasn’t used it and probably never will.
Yeah I remember once there was a young college-age guy and Bob was like “you looked kind of shocked” and the guy was like “I don’t need those!” about some weird dish set or something, and the crowd started booing
Barker tried to wrestle the game cards off him, it was actually hilarious
Ackshually it’s a third generation Viper. The SR-II from 1996 to 2001 was the second generation due to being massively changed exterior wise from the original SR-I. That makes the ZB the third.
Also, that’s about what I’d think would happen for things like that on The Price Is Right or Wheel Of Fortune when it comes to exotic cars or other stuff. Normal people just can’t or can’t justify using it, so they sell it. It essentially adds more steps to getting the expected pool value out of whatever they won on the show. Which is why both stopped doing it and offer things like a current year Ford Escape.
Thank you for clearing up the generations, pointing this out is usually my job.
SR II is seen as “first generation” as it’s still fundamentally the same car underneath… it’s the second revision of the SR. ZB is second generation.
But I mean, that’s just how me (and Wikipedia) talk about it; your way is equally valid, outside of whatever Chrysler thought of it as.
Here is the FCA press release from 2013 referring to a “5th generation”, which is not possible unless 08-10 is Gen 4, 03-06 is Gen 3, and 96-02 is Gen 2.
https://embargoed.stellantisnorthamerica.com/newsrelease.do?id=12204&mid=311
I can assure you that no Viper owner has ever referred to a ZB as “Gen 2”.
Cool story! I’m a member of a Facebook group called “The Price is Right Car Museum” where people post photos of the car prizes offered in the show — it’s fun to see some of the oddball stuff they had in the ’80s — but occasionally the winner of one of the cars is actually in the group and shares their story. It’s also where I learned that starting in 1992 Bob Barker mandated that all cars featured on the show be American. That has since changed.
They gave away a 20th Century Dale in the ’70s, wonder how that worked out for the winner, given that the car itself never existed and the entire company was just an investment scam
I haven’t seen a Dale in the group yet, but I have seen a Citicar, which did actually exist. Sure you’re not confusing the two?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar
Nope, turns out you’re right!
https://hagerty-media-prod.imgix.net/2021/01/Price_is_Right_Dale.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=crop&h=396&ixlib=php-3.3.0&w=640
You have to pay taxes on your winnings as if they were income (note: you are expected to claim your winnings at the casino, too–a friend got audited), and thirty grand against a 90K car is consistent with the five grand we paid against our Jeep, so I can corroborate DT’s source.
I also can, we won a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and had to pay taxes on it in a similar % amount based on what they declared it’s value.
Congratulations! Looking forward to that Member Rides!
lol thanks, this was YEARS ago now (not off price is right) and I’ve long since traded it in twice to eventually get the bike I really wanted.
it was pretty fascinating though, their declared value for that bike was a lot less than what I ended up getting back on the trade in. It was an 03(?) Fatboy in an anniversary release orange.
In the end I ended up with barely a year old 800mi “used” ’14 Vrod muscle, for out of pocket only $5k. I love it and my only gripe is that I dont get to use it as much as I used to because I work from home now and don’t commute on it anymore.
what an unexpected story! reading this was just great and more interesting than I would have thought. This is probably the most successful and heartwarming of a story a Viper has ever been responsible for.
It would be really interesting to hear what the other Mary and Peter did with their Vipers. I want to know if the euphoria quickly turned to terror when they realized they had just won an axe murderer of a car.
The golden age of The Price is Right was 2002?? You youths and your fun, by golly.
It’s all relative. But what do YOU think were the golden years? 🙂
Well, I think he just means that 2002 was STILL the golden age, the golden period being the entire time it was hosted by Bob Barker
1972-2007! What a run!
Holy crap I just realized the show continued after Bob Barker retired. I completely forgot about Drew Carey. Now it makes sense. uh, snark retracted. :-p
Yeah, and the original version with Bill Cullen is mostly forgotten now, particularly since a large number of tapes were wiped and no color copies survive of any of it.
Bob Barker had a long run!
Damn it, we have to have a rule about cutting onions around here.
Oh please tell me one of the kids is named Viper
OK, there was Peter who won a Viper and Mary who won a Viper. There must have been a Paul who got one at some point.
I think Paul ended up with Peter’s Viper.
well played
I’m confused, I thought that Peter Viper Picked a Peck of Paul’s Pickled Pepper? 😉
The Autopian is better than awful clickbait headlines. Please refrain from ever doing them again. Seriously.
Oh come on. Nearly every car guy has had to sell a car for other, more important, needs or wants. It can be tiring watching and reading about people who have funding to never have to sell their beloved vehicle because the vehicle exists to create media to entertain me, NOT exclusively for the enjoyment of the owner.
“We Found The Woman Who Won A Dodge Viper On The Price Is Right. What She Did With It Surprised Us”
This is objectively true, and is very much what the article is about. Making it most definitely not clickbait.
The problem here is that you associate “What ___ Did Surprised Us” with terrible clickbait. Which is a good reason for the Autopian to steer away from this style of title, but it doesn’t make this clickbait.
objectively true is still clickbait. Especially when what happened was not surprising to any ordinary reasonable person.
So, you saw the adoption twist coming?
She didn’t trade the car for a child. She sold the car. That is what she did with it. Sold it.
The real twist would have been if she had sold her child to buy the car.
That would be befitting of a “you wouldn’t believe what she did” headline.
It absolutely is clickbait and unbecoming of this publication. It’s something I associate with Jelly Prick, not a quality site.
So apparently we need to define clickbait.
We could define clickbait as “any title which is designed primarily to get people to click on the article”. However, by that definition, literally all titles are clickbait.
Which is why the usual definition of clickbait is “a title designed to get clicks based on the use of misleading claims or other misrepresentation”. Which this isn’t.
Not just misleading but also sensationalized headlines
pretty much anything that ends with:
You wouldn’t believe what they found.
What happened surprised them.
And an amazing thing happened.
What happened next was shocking.
But is it sensationalized? Wouldn’t that mean it’s exaggerated for the sake of being sensational? Matt said below that what she did with it really did surprise us. This headline is accurately portraying the actual sensation that happened within the Autopian staff.
I don’t think it counts as sensationalized if it’s objectively describing a literal sensation.
Clickbait is like obscenity, hard to define but easy to spot.
A headline that deliberately dangles a juicy revelation that will only be divulged if you read the article (and see all the ads, etc) is a common trope of clickbait. E.g. “We took a Changli to Pebble Beach. You won’t believe what happened.”
There’s an entire subreddit about this (r/savedyouaclick).
The same hypothetical article about a hypothetical notable BaT auction could have the following hypothetical headlines. Some are clearly clickbaity and others less so.
* Million-mile Discovery sold on BaT
* This clapped out Disco just sold on BaT for a boatload of money
* You won’t believe what some mook just blew $25k on
* Seven digit mileage, five digit price, find out how rich people live
* We looked at recent Discovery sales and the results will surprise you
The same trick used in radio and TV media–juicy info promised “after the break” (commercial break, natch).
Even reputable news orgs are playing the game now. I saw borderline clickbaity headlines on BBC News and NPR.
Autopians have a business to run and optimizing headlines for clicks is a legitimate and commonplace practice. I’ve done that kind of work myself in the past. But there’s a line, which these guys haven’t really crossed much, and this headline is an exception. It uses a cheap, overused trope that feels a little vulgar and declasse for a joint like this.
Look, it’s not a big deal. These guys and gals crank out the best automotive content online (at least in English). They have the scars from working for a shitty content farm that devolved spectacularly while they were there. They started this partly in reaction to that (at least that’s how I understand it–a place for high-quality content with few compromises). This is a good story. But it feels to some of us like the headline wasn’t up to the level of quality of the rest of the site, kind of cheap and slapdash, and it cheapens the brand a bit. We care a lot (probably too much) about this place because it’s special, and the headline is the opposite of that; it’s the kind of headline shitty sites use all the time, and it hurts because this place isn’t shitty.
I’m way over analyzing this, especially since Matt Mardi-Gras seems to indicate the headline was the literal truth with no tawdry intent whatsoever, and I believe him.
It just feels off. Like your favorite natural bakery used imitation vanilla extract in their custard.
Lets see:
Maybe you’re confusing “true but a little wordy” with clickbait?
The construction “what happened next surprised us” is, even if literally true in that it was surprising, still a very common piece of bait content mills use to create intrigue where otherwise there would be none. It’s akin to “you won’t believe this one weird trick” and “x facts about y. Number z will SHOCK you.”
It’s a heartwarming and totally worthy story, and it is surprising at least in that you’d kind of expect to hear “the taxes were too high/we were broke/it was too much car.” Even so, the headline is identical to the generic, dramatic instigation less reputable outlets use to bait users into clicking.
I don’t think there is clickbait on Autopian. I do think they should now and in the future avoid the tropes that lesser sites use to draw in readers. It would have been exciting enough just to tell the story of a game show-won Viper.
I’d only tolerate a clickbait headline like this if the article ends up being a wholly unrelated Torch treatise on accidentally duplicated tail light gasket part numbers.
Quite honestly, this entire storyline started with me asking Lewin to find that Peter guy because I assumed he immediately wrapped it around the tree, so when I read it and it ended up with Mary and adopting a kid I was like “wow, I’m very surprised” and that’s how we ended up here.
This didn’t strike me as clickbait. The Autopian does, as far as I know, want clicks, so I don’t really see the problem here. Seem like it worked too!
I’m in the “that headline was icky” camp and yet completely believe y’all’s intentions were pure and literal. I guess I would have expected a more whimsical hook, like “Price is Right Winner Trades In Viper for Two Children”
I won $8k on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Wanna hear my story? I didn’t buy a car with the $$, though…
How many lifelines did you use?
All of them. The 50/50 was the least useful.
Naturally. In most multiple choice tests/games 2 answers are pretty obviously wrong, 1 is the ‘foil’ and the other is the answer (assuming 4 choices.) Pretty sure in the 50/50 it’s not random, but they drop the two pretty obviously wrong answers.
I started to make a list in my head the other day of who I would call in phone a friend, and realized I need more friends. Most friends have similar expertise in similar areas, so if something like biology came up, I have no idea who I would call.
At the time, I was a subscriber to the trivia magazine Mental Floss. I contacted them, and they put me in touch with one of their researchers, and he agreed to be one of my phone a friend lifelines. It was actually a husband and wife team, and they were who I ended up using.
Ghostbusters!
Great story Lewin.
Thank you!
She traded her Viper for a family. Outstanding move, Mary.
And she still got to have some fun with the Viper for awhile
I’d do the opposite tbh
Having now survived 6ish months with a non-traction controlled MRoadster after a lifetime of cheap, low-powered beaters, I would step willingly into a Viper.
But I damn sure wouldn’t mat the load pedal without much cautious exploration!
Car—or family? Many of us have had to choose. I can’t say I regret my choices having now seen my 2nd grandchild: quite worth it.
Knowing your limits, the road, and having experience is HUGE. I had an opportunity to drive a hellcat challenger once, and took it to the merge ramps I learned to drive on. Goosed it the tiniest bit turning, road was maybe a tiny bit damp, decided it was going to be locked straight for me to think about flooring the skinny pedal. Even with electronic nannies. Exploring limits safely is key.
“Man’s gotta know his limitations.”
—all humans, to be sure.
This is a fun Jalop, non-Jalop story! The world of exotic cars spending time with less exotic lifestyles.
I thought them using the valet service was cute.
Yeah, the valet service was probably the biggest risk they took during the ownership of their Viper!
(How DID those tires look the next day, Ferris?)
ahah, you know I didn’t even think about that