Nostalgia is a big thing. I’ve been searching around for info on the Viper Defender show from about ’94. I have the movie on tape somewhere and maybe a couple of episodes of the first series (which is all was shown on Australian TV).
The whole concept was that some bloke who had his legs shot in a cop shootout designed this car (Dodge Viper) that would stop crime without hurting people, but it was impossible to handle and all the drivers he tested failed. The project was about to be canned, so the Mayor of the city took an unprecedented step of surgically transforming a known criminal who was a brilliant driver into a good guy, and deleting his old memory. He fits the car brilliantly and starts fighting crime in the form of a group called the Outfit, who are linked to the Mayor (yep, he corrupt). The Outfit knows what’s going on so they blow up the driver’s girlfriend and throw the Mayor off of a bridge. The driver figures out there is something wrong and jeopardises the whole project. Anyway, it works out in end and the series was born.
I think the show was mainly used to push sales of the Dodge Viper, which, was a bloody cool car. The car would transform from the regular red Viper RT-10 to some crazy non-existent Defender Viper. It could therefore go undercover (unless the crims knew a red Viper was tailing them I guess). I just found out they later switched to a GTS, probably so they could push those (sweat blue with white racing stripes).
Anyway, if you don’t know, now you know.
