I spent quite a few months trawling the internet trying to come up with the Viper for me! But alas as the months went on I realised the problem to my dream trip was going to be the insurance.
I was not able to find any company willing to cover a UK driver with out a US residence or a US driver’s licence. Anyway one evening I was continuing my quest on the VCA site when I happened across a 2001 viper with sensible mods and only 3000 miles from my father in laws house where he lives in Seattle.
Best of all Don the owner/seller said he would be willing to put me on his insurance for the duration of my trip. Several phone conversations to Don Carter who was the only owner from new. Primarily trying to convince him this was not some internet scam.My father in-law Brian, met me at Okalahoma city airport and Don came and picked us up in his superb Bright yellow H2 hummer. He remarked it was only after he had met us that he knew we were not scammers after all.

We drove 80 miles up the road to Enid where Don lives so we dropped round to his place to check over the car before we got some well earned sleep. I was overwhelmed because the car was exactly as described
Never seen rain and under 4000 miles! A real garage queen! It sounded awesome with its Corsa exhaust system but I knew that we were going to have to pack the original exhaust system for the SVA test back in the UK. Next morning we did the exchange of the monies went to the local UPS depot and packaged up the exhaust for its trip to Seattle. $75 changed hands and it was on its way. Brian and I put our bags in what little area is referred to as the trunk and we off on our adventure!

We drove 3000 miles staying in motels every night. We followed the original route 66 for a way and then into Arizona stayed over in Vegas, across into San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge and off up the coast into Oregon and finally up to Seattle. Total of 3100 miles at an average of 14 to the gallon (US gallon!) And in one week! Got the car back to Brains garage and changed all the fluids as they are real cheap out there, So that was Diff, coolant, Clutch and brake fluid, and of course the hard to get over here Mobil One. We had to cut up the original exhaust system to fit it into the car.