Want and Thirst
Some cars are shockingly fuel efficient given their astounding performance. The Viper isn’t one of them.
By 2016, the Dodge Viper ACR delivered 645 horsepower from its 8.4-liter pushrod V10. It burned a gallon of premium unleaded every 21 miles on the highway, 12 miles in city driving, roughly 6 miles at the track, and zero while revving freely in car show parking lots. Its steering was hydraulically assisted, while most sports cars and supercars had switched to electric assist (with less parasitic drag, it was more fuel efficient) a decade or two earlier. Cylinder deactivation happened only when you turned off the ignition.
Fuel consumption alone didn’t kill the Viper. After all, gasoline was relatively cheap in 2016, and CAFE governmental regulations weren’t getting any stricter at the time. Its main cause of death might have been fratricide; thanks to supercharging, each Hellcat, Redeye, and Demon had higher specific output despite lower-displacement engines with two fewer cylinders. Keeping the Viper fed and nourished wasn’t in the will of parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which shuttered the Viper’s Conner Avenue assembly plant in Detroit in 2017.
Really, thirst killed the Viper. People were thirsty for things the Viper couldn’t quench: practicality, fuel efficiency, volumetric efficiency, social acceptability, more sales volume, and a million other things that no single car can provide.
Want, lack, scarcity, and limits are the chains enslaving all of humanity. Jesus spoke of this enslavement when he shared these life-giving words with the woman at the well:
“Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” John 4:14
Thirst, that primal need, would have been the dominant preoccupation of anyone living during Jesus’ time. In this exchange, the woman at the well spoke of Jacob drinking from the well, along with his “sons and his flocks and herds.” Range anxiety was an issue back then too, because sheep, horses, humans, or even camels could only go so far without water, and carrying too many gallons of water eventually becomes self-defeating. But thirst is a mere allegory here to show that want itself, or desire, controls all human thought and behavior.
God alone satisfies want, desire, and thirst. There are no limits to his provision, and no scarcity. Only abundance, as Jesus would show with his bread, fish, and wine miracles. There are no exceptions, caveats, or exclusions to his provision either when he distributed food or his very body and blood. His work echoed Isaiah’s prophecy: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!” (Isaiah 55:1)
As countless rich folks and lottery winners can attest, satisfaction doesn’t come from attaining what your heart thinks it thirsts for. A Dodge Viper in the driveway can be a way of connecting to God and witnessing his provision, but it won’t ultimately satisfy. Dodge could have made the Viper more fuel efficient, or built it with four doors and a three-inch lift and made an SUV out of it, but that wouldn’t have satisfied all its critics either because that’s not how thirst and satisfaction work.
It is God’s joy to replenish and nourish you, and welcome you as you run on fumes into his arms. So come, “all you who are thirsty.” That’s everyone, and that’s okay. There’s plenty of God’s free fuel to go around.
The last Vipers had 16-gallon tanks. Assuming 6 mpg during track use, that’s 8 laps around the 12-mile Nurburgring Nordschleife, 23.4 at Virginia International Raceway (4.1 miles), or 384 quarter-mile passes, assuming you race both ways. That’s fun to think about. What a satisfying way to spend a day.
John V16 is the intersection of God and cars. Please support our work and donate a V16-powered 1940 Cadillac Series 90 Sixteen to John V16. Or share this article with a friend.
