Images of Fashion & Glamour Model Susan Hill with the ASC McLaren Viper, shot for a feature magazine article.

ASC Diamondback Viper, Powered by McLaren Photos and text by AdPix.Biz Model: Susan Hill Makeup: Ashley Dorenzo Location: ASC Design Studios, Southgate Michigan Somebody somewhere, somehow, thought the Viper was not mean enough. Any Viper’s  bad – but this one’s like the Boy Named Sue. Leave it to ASC (American Specialty Cars of Southgate Michigan, http://www.ASCGlobal.com/) “America’s Pininfarina,” to make it meaner. What else could anyone do to make a Viper more, like a viper? Some folks add supercharging, play with the chip, add bigger brakes – you can imagine it’s pretty much the same bolt-on formula. But those are just add-ons compared to this car. ASC made it a thoroughly-meaner Viper from the ground up, as only ASC can do. ASC has been making cars better, both for and from the factory, for 41 years. They convinced the staid car manufacturers of the mid-1960’s - companies that really had little motivation to do anything they didn’t want to do - that ASC could add excitement when the word itself was rare in the US automotive vocabulary at the time. They could do it in a way that would be affordable, and just as well built as the original construction. The company was founded by Heinz Prechter, now in the Automotive Hall of Fame. A German immigrant with $11 to his name, he started by adding sunroofs, one at a time, for celebrities. Working with George Barris, the Hollywood Batmobile creator, he was soon building complete specialty cars for Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen. President Johnson had ASC fabricate his limousine. Before long they were doing mass installations for Ford and Chrysler, with Thunderbirds, Cougars and Chargers. Then it was General Motors’ Cadillacs. ASC made sunroofs a mainstay of the American Car Experience. OEMs liked working with ASC because, unlike so many wild-eyed companies, ASC took the time to study how the cars were made and engineered actual improvements, not mere slap-on modifications. One example is ASC’s InfiniVu convertible, based on a Hummer H3.They didn’t just cut off the top, but engineered a patented, scalable sliding-roof system that is capable of accommodating flexible fabric, glass or the GE polycarbonate Lexan (ASC announced a special partnership with GE Plastics at this year’s Detroit auto show).  In fabric, InfiniVu operates like an accordion - occupants open it all the way for a panoramic view, or in sections. And the SUV—any SUV— retains its stiffness and rollover protection.

Last year they impressed the world, even Chrysler, with a convertible 300C called the Helios, after the Greek god of the sky. It’s one of those things everyone had just assumed couldn’t be done -- a modern-day, production-ready four-door convertible (with a 5’8” top) – until it was sitting there in the metal. ASC also has marketed its specialty models directly to the public. The most famous may be the 1987 ASC/McLaren Buick Grand National GNX model, a beautiful example of which is displayed proudly in ASC’s front windows. A more menacing black muscle beast has never been made for the street. ASC were also the first to develop factory-installed entertainment systems, the retractable hardtop for the Mitsubishi 3000 GT Spyder (the first modern RHT, several years ahead of the first Mercedes RHT), and the first to design and retractable-hardtop for a pickup truck (the Chevy SSR). ASC now regularly produces a unique, rebuilt and re-designed, 1932 Ford Deuce convertible replica. In addition to a (modern) convertible top, it has a full-metal body, 3-inch larger doors, strengthened chassis, and power windows-- all, designed with modern computer-aided design techniques. Unlike the original ’32 Fords, it’s even symmetrical! The metal platform on which we shot Susan and the Viper is actually a computer-numerically-controlled clay-model shaver, called in the trade a CNC mill. It can carve up to full-size, perfect, clay models of cars from digital files. This is not just a tuner shop; ASC is a bona fide “Tier One” auto supplier to the industry. ASC is a “full-service specialty-vehicle partner for all of the world’s automakers,” says Tim Yost, director of marketing.  They really are the American version of Pininfarina, even competing for, and wining, design contracts for European car companies, including Porsche. They have built a bunch of Bentleys, 10 with retractable hard tops, for the Sultan of Brunei, for example.Fortunately for all of us, they stayed true to one little-noticed aspect of their success – they’re car nuts. All of ‘em. Every last ASC employee is certifiably car-crazy. Their CEO awards a “Car Nut” trophy, a 5-pound, 6” tall real nut on a wooden plaque, to the most car-crazy employee each month! You can see the awards hanging all over ASC’s giant facilities (the company employs 1,000, about 150 are designers). And each has a cool story. One guy is building his own car, one recipient has a nationally ranked RC car, and one just won national show-car awards. There are cool cars and bikes, both real and scale, all over the place. Both the CEO and vice chairman of the company, Paul Wilbur and Chris Theodore (who is also the acknowledged “father of the Ford GT” from his later years at Ford Motor), worked at Chrysler when the Viper was originally designed, and they each own one. ASC’s folks are personally passionate about cars and this shows in ASC’s work, like this Viper. GM’s legions of committees couldn’t build a Diamondback McLaren Viper if the company’s life depended on it, which in some respects, it does. One more exciting point about this car – ASC is using it to showcase a new type of carbon-fiber bonding they’re patenting called OmniCarbon. “That is the reason for the ’Diamondback’ moniker – a reference to the carbon-fiber pattern in the unpainted, natural-weave sections,” said Marques McCammon, the head of the entire Diamondback Viper program for ASC (and know as the “father of the Dodge Neon SRT4 when he, too, was at Chrysler). It is real carbon fiber, not just a veneer, saving half the weight of the body panels it replaced (note Susan holding the hood so easily, and beautifully of course) for nearly 85 pounds of total weight savings just for the five panels involved. Yet their compression-molding technique, which uses bonding with ASC’s “secret sauce” instead of the heat of a traditional autoclave, reduces cycle times by 80% making carbon fiber now a feasible part of OEM production, not just for Enzo’s and Carrera GT’s anymore. It isn’t presently committed for production or racing by ASC, but plenty have expressed interest, and seeing it there in deep “Arctic-White” with “Viper Blue” and “McLaren Red” pinstripes, McLaren trumpets jutting up proudly through the symmetrical diamondback weave of carbon fiber on the hood, you know that someone soon will.

Another exciting development that this represents is the trend toward niche vehicles. With the dead-end boxes our big three automakers are in, it seems that light, nimble folks like the skunkworks of ASC may be the future of the automobile industry. They can respond to foreign competition much more efficiently and quickly. The big makers could contract out exciting cars like this Viper (or perhaps the just-cancelled Ford GT?) for limited production and we would all be yet another satisfying step away from the bland K-car future we once faced. That period still causes shivers just to remember.  Moving this way is going full circle for automotive manufacturers: from the bespoke custom coachbuilders, where every car was a one-off, to the unimaginative limited model lines of the 70’s and ‘80’s, and now back to the thinnest sliver of niche production. But unlike the coachbuilder era a century ago, where only the Rockefellers could have their Derhams and Brewsters, companies today like ASC can make a carbon-fiber McLaren Viper available, or at least almost affordable. Just ten years ago a car with this much technology and performance would have been unobtainable. To fully appreciate this car, remember it is  motivated by McLaren. Yes, that McLaren, of F1 and CanAm racing. ASC could probably have bumped up the horsepower themselves, and there are lots of tuners out there than can make a Viper scream. But ASC knew this car needed sophisticated, thoroughly-engineered uumph. McLaren’s V-10 puts out 615 hp with enough torque to pull a train. Note the signature-McLaren canted intakes, showing individual throttles for each. You might first think they’re loose, or not quite lined up. But McLaren does them that way so the air is not blocked by the intakes in front. Each intake gets a clean shot of the airflow. Given McLaren’s racing heritage, you don’t question stuff like that; you just go slant your intakes. We do not know exactly what McLaren did to it; they don’t have to tell anyone. But we know they’re getting an extra 125 hp (and that is most likely a conservative “public” number) above the stock 500 V-10, without turbos or superchargers. We know that in order to do that the displacement could be increased, and the timing changed, the exhaust opened up, and the computer chip altered to maximize all of that new flow. In that respect, those gorgeous chrome trumpet intakes are probably quite beneficial and it also means McLaren has produced a monster Viper that can spit 615 horsepower without a tear of sweat, if reptiles can even do that. But you didn’t just want to read about automotive trends and productions techniques. The good stuff is that this Viper enjoys the 2.6-inch lengthened wheelbase of the RT/10, but weighs only 3325 pounds for a horsepower-to-weight ratio of 5.4. (The Ferrari 430 is 6.8 lbs/hp, and the 2006 Corvette Z06 is 6.3) It leaps to 60 mph in a mere 3.5 seconds, and with carbon fiber used strategically throughout, all of its performance parameters are likewise enhanced. Susan, on the other hand, didn’t need enhancements. She’s natural all the way through and genuinely sweet to the bones of her 5’8” frame. She positively glowed throughout this shoot, dropping jaws of all the guys in the room, and whatddyaknow, somehow word got around and there were more and more guys coming in throughout the day to drop  jaws. She entertained them in stride with that gorgeous Miss America smile and entrancing combination of hot glamour and warm personality. And her nickname is Skeetercupcake. What a sweetie. MMMMMmmm good. Take her home to Mom.