The FCA assembly plant on Conner Avenue in Detroit, MI will be closed indefinitely in the near future. This is the plant where the Dodge Viper had been produced during its two different runs in production. Unfortunately, the Viper isn’t going to continue to be built which means there is no need for an assembly plant that’s set up to build a vehicle that won’t be offered on the market. This is a sad event for the company, but it seems that FCA doesn’t have any plans to change this plant into a place where anything else is built.

The Dodge Viper has been one of the most admired high-performance cars on the market but it seems this was a car that should have been made more aggressively and offered only for track applications or it should have been dialed down and offered as a higher production model. As it was built and delivered, the Viper is a car that took a lot of work to drive and had the qualities to make you feel like you needed to kneel down and pray before and after every drive in this car on the road or at the track.

For the 2016 model year, the Viper was only sold in 630 units while a final limited-edition model that was offered for 2017 sold out in less than a week, which isn’t really a surprise. This run was offered after the announcement of the fact that it wouldn’t be built any longer. Another reason for the Viper’s demise is the fact that it won’t meet upcoming safety regulations in its current form because it doesn’t have side curtain airbags. This and the financial troubles of FCA made the decision to discontinue the Viper an easy one for the company.

In order to help make things better for the workforce of 87 employees that work at Conner Assembly, FCA has already announced the will offer positions at other FCA locations to all of the members of the staff prior to closing the plant. This assembly plant used to be where the Champion brand spark plugs were made until Dodge bought it back in 1995 specifically for the purpose of building the Viper. This car has been one that gave us a lot of fun and fright on the road and at the track and unfortunately, it will be gone.

The Viper production is scheduled to end in August and then the plant will be closed. There might be a new model of the Viper in the future, but not in the same way it’s been offered or at the low volume that it’s been produced over the past several years. With the Viper struggling to ever reach 700 models sold in North America, this may be a sour farewell to the car and the plant it was built in, but this course of action was inevitable as FCA needs more high-volume models to carry the brand.