A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Greetings all Viperados & Viperettes,

It has been a ‘pleasant’ winter in southern Ontario (pleasant, that is, if you’re a member of the Nunavit Viper Club). Unusual indeed, there’s been rumours of Viper sightings, slithering around town in the middle of Jan. and Feb. Well, with our early spring (Paolo Rossi has arranged it...) the Vipers have all now awoken. Hopefully by now you have received your Viper Notes, and the Spring issue of the Viper Magazine.

We have been preparing for this season on several fronts. At our last meeting at Frank and Mary Defrancesco’s, Sonny Stone took on the design and production of the Ontario Region T-shirts and Polo shirts; Mardy Sevardjian took on the elusive VCO leather jacket which will be manufactured in India, and Frank Fusillo has offered to provide track support, Dyno Day, a tech. session (at SPI). What a bunch of nice guys - it should be noted that Sonny Stone is also particularly good looking. Anyways, thank you from all of us.

The DC Brampton Plant visit will be on May 6th (email me your RSVP soon). This Plant is the home of The 300C, The Magnum, The Charger and the 425 hp SRT/8s. The management has gone to great lengths to welcome us - as we are their best client. There will be a tour through the plant while they are building the vehicles, and a Show and Shine afterward for the employees - hope to see you there. The Viper Factory (Connor Avenue Assembly Plant CAAP) visit in Detroit is planned for Sunday & Monday, June 25th-26th, with an overnight stay at Casino Windsor Hotel. Also, the Viper Owner Invitational (VOI.9) in Las Vegas is coming up, and many more fantastic programs. See your program schedule at http://www.ontario.viperclub.org

We are closing in on 60 members which is a record for our club, thanks for all your support. For our new members’ benefit, I’ll explain briefly that our organization works as follows; Our Club is a part (Region) of the National VCA, which consists of several ZONES: NorthEast ZONE, SouthEast ZONE, MIDWEST ZONE(ours), SouthWest ZONE, Western ZONE, Asian ZONE, and European ZONE, with an approximate membership of 4,600 members.

A large portion of our membership fees goes to the National Club: $45 U.S.D., and the remainder stays in our club under the careful eyes of our Chartered Accountant Pat DiFiore aka Wormdoggy. Our contribution helps defray National's cost, to produce the Viper Magazine quarterly, provide the membership tags/memorabilia, organize the Zone Rendezvous, pay J.R Thompson (Viper HQ for running the day-to-day business) and cover some of the expenses for the Viper Owners Invitational (VOI). So, enough of the boring stuff! Hey - we have some incredible times ahead this summer - check this - on a private road course!!!

For those who wants to practice their skills on a road course, there will be track time at Cayuga (Toronto Motorsport). This will include the 3 km road course (exclusively for Vipers with instructors), and some 1/4 mile drag strip sessions. We are hoping to do the track on weekends, twice a month during the summer.

Track time is expensive to rent, any member's sponsorship will be rewarded by having their company's website logo posted on the VCO website. So far we have received generous donations from some of our members, thanks you guys. One final note, please re-learn the snake's driving (this is not your family sedan) all over again. Make sure you are really in control before any spirited driving - which really should be spared for the track.

Hope to see you all soon, many thanks to Chris Vogel from Vigraph for producing this issue. Also, many thanks to the board of directors for their support.

Nabil

VCO member Frank Fusilio is an owner of Shifted Perceptions Inc. With partner Andrew Turner, they are putting together one scary, unique twin turbo Viper package. Read on!

Four pictures are worth a thousand words. Notice the subtle change in the size of the, ahem, turbo plumbing in a few of these statues??

John & Deb Guyitt win the prize: a cool Dodge Cap! Honorable mention to Albert Ulisse! Special thanks for Mike Buchanan's good sportsmanship.

As most of you know, our illustrious El Presidente and the First Lady of Vipers were married this past February. This photo was taken en route to the wedding by paparazzi eager to snap any shots of authentic V10 Royalty! When this photo passed across the editorial desk, it was immediately declared ‘Photo of the Century’ by your editorial staff. Consider it in historical perspective: it’s right up there with the WW II portrait of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, the American GIs raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and of course, Mike Buchanan in front of ‘The Statue’.
Congratulations Nabil & Eda. May your reign last forever.

Many of us have seen our Viper seats start to crack on the backs, about half way up on the outside. Once that happens, it only gets worse as mine did. So I re-did them and it turned out great. (Editor’s Note: Once again, in a family newsletter, we couldn’t print just exactly how happy it made Pat feel).
Z-Best did the re-vinyl covering and Artistic Impressions did the ACR embroidery. Vinyl wears better than leather so I went with a soft high quality vinyl. A Viper friend of mine (Shane Carter) builds Willy's, Cobra's and other cars from the frame up and turned me on to these vendor's. They did a great job. $250 U.S. each seat = $500 total plus $75 for the ACRs.