2013 SRT Viper suffering from sales slump?

Nobody has ever accused the all-new 2013 SRT Viper of being slow, but even with the rebounding economy the high-performance coupe seems to be suffering from slow sales out of the gate. According to Automotive News, the Viper has sold 426 units since it went on sale in February with an additional 565 unsold units sitting around in dealer inventory, which shows that SRT was a little too optimistic in its initial sales expectations for the Viper.

The company was originally hoping to sell around 2,000 Vipers each year, but in light of this inventory excess, SRT is said to be scaling back production of the Viper and reassigning workers (the report says no workers are being laid off) from its Conner Avenue Assembly plant to other plants near Detroit. Sales figures excluded, this is definitely not the start the company was looking for on its revived sports coupe – especially after losing head-to-head track battles with the Chevy Corvette (both the C6 ZR1 and C7 Stingray) in comparison tests.

To help spark sales, SRT boss Ralph Gilles is taking his enthusiasm to dealers in the Southeast next month where customers will have the opportunity to test drive factory-owned Vipers. This comes in response to dealers being reluctant to let too many people test drive the 640-horsepower coupes in their inventory.