Auto News 5

Barry Manilow’s 1970s hit song “Looks Like We Made It” wasn’t blaring from the loudspeakers on the Chrysler stand at the Javits Center in Manhattan today, but it might as well have been. There was no better way for Chrysler to announce to the world that it’s back from the brink, it’s made it through its bankruptcy and painful restructuring, and it fully expects to thrive than by taking the wraps off the 2013 SRT Viper at the 2012 New York Auto Show. After all, imagine how unlikely a new Viper was only three years ago, when Chrysler almost went out of business altogether. If the company survived, bread-and-butter products like family sedans, crossovers, and pickup trucks would, naturally, have to command the bulk of product-development dollars. How could there possibly be interest in something as indulgent as a low-volume, expensive, high-performance sports car?