Cars Electric Vehicles
ByAlex Hevesy/
The American car landscape wasn't exactly awe-inspiring in the early 2000s. This was the era that birthed famous automotive mishaps like the Plymouth Prowler, a sleek retro roadster that was betrayed by a weak powerplant, the Pontiac Aztek, essentially a lifted minivan with a face only Walter White could love, and the venerable PT Cruiser, a car everyone loves to hate despite the fact Chrysler sold millions of them all over the world.
Back in the halcyon days of 2003, before the return of the Dodge Charger and Challenger and several years before Dodge started calling everything a Hellcat, the only performance car to wear the Dodge badge at the time was the Viper. At the heart of every Dodge Viper is a gargantuan V10. The first Viper was little more than a V10 engine, a steering wheel and a tube steel frame. It's what gave the Viper its so-called "bite," and one of the primary reasons the Viper is so fondly remembered today. It was from a time where the performance division of Dodge seemingly said the phrase "let's just wing it" as a strategy for building sports cars.
Dodge extended this design ethos to its concept vehicles. One such concept vehicle was the Dodge Tomahawk — a vehicle so positively insane that its top speed is listed as "theoretical" because no one was brave enough (or dumb enough) to test its limits.
An exercise in pure, dangerous speed
The Tomahawk wasn't really a car per se, it had four wheels and an engine, but that's where the similarities reach a dead-stop. The 2003 Dodge Tomahawk Concept consisted of four wheels, a 500 horsepower 8.3-liter V10 sourced from a Viper, some foolhardiness in design for good measure, and that's it. There's barely a seat. It's the distilled essence of a Viper in a vehicle that would make every insurance policy adjuster have night terrors.
The vehicle first debuted at the North American International Auto Show in 2003, and was met with an even mix of confusion and awe. Trevor Creed, the then Senior Vice President Design for the Chrysler Group (now owned by Stellantis) said: "The Dodge brand philosophy always challenges us to grab life by the horns. In the case of Tomahawk, grabbing and holding onto anything for dear life is a necessity. It's just that extreme and passionate; a glimpse into the soul and commitment of true enthusiasts." (via Stellantis).
For top speed, Chrysler said it was in the neighborhood of 400 miles per hour, making it one of the fastest vehicles ever made by a car manufacturer, beating out everything Bugatti has ever come up with. Chrysler didn't know the actual top speed because no one was willing to strap themselves to a V10 and propel themselves to a little over half the speed of sound.
More hellacious than a Hellcat
The Tomahawk concept weighed 1,500 pounds — that's heavy for any motorcycle-like object — but dangerously light for something that has a V10. For comparison, the Mazda Miata, a car known for being light, only weighs 2,341 pounds. A Formula One car literally made to be as light as possible has to weigh at least 1,759 pounds per F1 rules (via Autosport). Those cars have at least seatbelts or some form of restraint that prevents the driver from becoming a projectile in the event of a crash.The Tomahawk does not have that luxury.
The Tomahawk never saw production, and it's easy to see why. According to Dodge, the concept vehicle was never meant to see the light of a dealership showroom. It was more of an exercise in how scary it can make a vehicle before reason stepped in and made the designers lay down and take a nap before adding more horsepower to a vehicle with only a little more structural integrity than a riding lawnmower.
A motorcycle with the bite of a Viper
The Dodge Viper, especially during its original run back in the early 90s, was not only one of the wildest cars Dodge ever made, but one of the craziest vehicles ever made by a major automaker. Drivers didn't have the luxury of a well-appointed interior or even air conditioning. The Dodge Tomahawk takes this concept and completely runs with it. It's barely a vehicle and more of an engine that you have to pilot by awkwardly sitting on top of it and hoping you don't hit even the smallest obstacle in the road.
500 horsepower out of a huge V10 could be hard to handle in its native Viper, but it might as well be the power of a Saturn V rocket when in the Tomahawk. At 8.3-liters (505 cubic inches), the Tomahawk's engine sported a larger displacement than the sixteen-cylinder powerplant in the Bugatti Chiron. It's more than 6.3-liters larger than the engine in a Harley Davidson Street Glidemotorcycle.
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