A Golden Viper for Charity
By Roger Meiners
Tammy Allen, a Grand Junction Colo., car enthusiast, attended this year’s Barrett-Jackson Auction in Scottsdale, Ariz. to buy a fleet of classic cars for a new business venture—a limousine service for car lovers. She toured the massive display tents with her dad and her daughter, looking for classics that would excite her potential customers. As she neared the prime display space in the main tent she spotted an unusual gold Viper shimmering in the spotlights. The reflections from the Viper’s paint were unusual. The car had a matte finish instead of the usual highly-polished show paint.
“I wanted a Viper for a long time,” said Allen. “As soon as I saw the car I fell in love with it. I loved the matte paint.”
A few months before, Ron Flint, president of Hurst Performance Vehicles, was in a meeting with Bill Pemberton, the Viper and SRT® sales manager of Woodhouse Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep® in Blair, Neb. They were discussing Hurst’s idea to team up on producing a Hurst Challenger. “We heard about all the performance stuff Woodhouse was doing from DC Performance, the Viper tuner in L.A., so I met with Bill Pemberton,” said Flint. During the discussion Pemberton revealed that Woodhouse was going to do a special-edition Viper. Why not make it a Hurst/Woodhouse Viper? Hurst liked the idea and proposed to auction the first one at Barrett-Jackson.
The result: The matte gold Viper coupe on display at Barrett-Jackson. As the project proceeded, NASCAR star Kyle Petty and his wife Pattie’s Victory Junction Gang Camp entered the picture as a charity beneficiary. Woodhouse would donate the profits from a sale to Victory Junction. This ramped up the publicity value of the project.
Tammy Allen stood there, looking at the strikingly painted Viper. “I told my dad, ‘I’m getting it.’” Her dad wasn’t so sure. He cautioned her, saying, “That’s going to be too fast.” Allen responded, “Dad, you don’t always have to drive fast.” She reminded him that the accelerator pedal had “slow” settings, too, and repeated, “I’m getting it!”
This changed her car-buying strategy slightly. She had to conserve enough cash to make sure she won the Viper.
When the car came up for bid, Allen was ready. Kyle Petty’s son, Austin was there and so was veteran Hurst Golden Shifter girl Linda Vaughn as a crowd gathered to see who would buy the car. Allen was not to be denied. She stuck with the bidding until she emerged the victor. The price: $275,000 after auction fees, the highest price ever paid for a new Viper.
She was surprised at all the excitement after the sale. “Linda and all the Woodhouse people were excited that the winner was a girl,” she said. “I believe they thought a guy would buy it, because they had gold cufflinks and a gold tie tack in the glove compartment.”
Lance Pittack, president of the Omaha, Neb. metro area Woodhouse Auto Family said, “It’s fantastic that this Hurst/Woodhouse Viper brought the highest price for the
marque and gave us an opportunity to donate a significant amount to a worthy cause.” He presented a check for $125,000 to Victory Junction.
“The Hurst/Woodhouse Viper is an amazing collaboration and the resulting donation will provide life-changing camp experiences for many children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses,” added Pattie Petty, co-founder of Victory Junction. “Kyle Petty and I are so grateful to Hurst Performance Vehicles and the Woodhouse Auto Family for their generous support of the new Victory Junction camp location in Kansas City.”
Tammy Allen loves the gold Hurst 50th Anniversary Dodge Viper so much that she recently purchased its stable mate, a gold Hurst Viper convertible. She intends to
keep the cars together and drive them only on special occasions, so she just purchased a blue Viper coupe to enjoy all that performance on a daily basis. “My dad doesn’t even know I bought it,” she said when we interviewed her. We’re sure he knows by now.
