This is a glass-topped coffee table built around a Dodge Viper V10 engine that was sourced from a ZB I Viper, and it’s now being offered for sale.
Engine-based coffee tables like this have been becoming ever more common in recent years, but most are built around V8 engines, with a few being built using something a little more unusual, like a Lamborghini V12 or a WWII-era radial aircraft engine.
This is a glass-topped coffee table built around a Dodge Viper V10 engine that was sourced from a ZB I Viper, and it’s now being offered for sale.
History Speedrun: The Dodge Viper V10 Engine
The Dodge Viper was originally conceived as a modern version of the Shelby Cobra. This may seem odd given that the Cobra had been based on a Ford drivetrain, but Carroll Shelby had been hired by Chrysler in 1978 specifically to help resurrect the performance image of Dodge.
The man who had hired Shelby to work with Chrysler was the same man who had hired him to work with Ford, the great Lee Iacocca. Iacocca and Shelby had worked together on the Shelby Cobra, Ford GT40, and Shelby Mustang programs – delivering a black eye to Ferrari with the dominant performances of the GT40 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, winning the event four times on the trot from 1966 to 1969.
Once working on contract with Chrysler, Shelby and his team set to work creating a series of Dodge production cars with a series of performance upgrades. This was right in the midst of the Malaise Era, so these cars weren’t fast by today’s standards, but when viewed in the context of their time there were some genuinely quick Shelby-badged Dodges being built.
It would be in the middle of the 1980s that the idea of working with Shelby to develop a modern Shelby Cobra, within the Dodge family of course. The project was largely undertaken within Dodge, though Carroll Shebly did have input and would even drive a pre-production Viper as the pace vehicle in the Indianapolis 500 in 1991.
The difficulty of casting a V10 aluminum block led to Chrysler getting Lamborghini onboard to help, as they had decades of experience casting complex aluminum V12 engines, and they were more than happy to help with anything that would compete with their age old arch rivals at Ferrari.
The first generation Dodge Viper entered production in 1991, the model series would be built over three generations until 2017, all of which were two-door V10s with displacement ranging from 8.0 to 8.4 liters, and horsepower figures from 400 bhp up to 645 bhp.
The Dodge Viper V10 Engine Coffee Table Shown Here
The coffee table you see here started out as a V10 in a ZB I Dodge Viper. This engine was stripped, the internal parts removed, it was then given four piston feet for its new life as a table.
The coffee table you see here started out as a V10 in a ZB I Dodge Viper. This engine was stripped, the internal parts removed, it was then given four piston feet for its new life as a table.
The valve covers, exhaust manifolds, and intake were all left in place – and the glass tabletop has a cutout which allows the intake to rise up through the middle. The glass measures in at 44″ wide by 44″ long, and it sits approximately 21.5″ from the ground.
This unusual coffee table is now being offered for sale out of Pompano Beach, Florida on Bring a Trailer. You can visit the listing here if you’d like to read more about it or register to bid.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
