Photos by Will Cornelius
Laura Sheets and her father, Guy Sheets, outside the family home with their cherished 1999 Dodge Viper GTS in the driveway.

By Will Cornelius
The Surveyor

They don’t make them anymore and it is rare to see one on city streets these days. No! Not newspapers! We’re talking about Dodge Vipers! But luckily Berthoud still has both.

On June 16, 2004, the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor published its first issue. The headline story was about Berthoud teenager Laura Sheets and her budding love for fast cars, specifically a new bright red Dodge Viper the family had purchased. For the 1,000th issue, the Surveyor caught up with the Sheets family to see how they and their red Dodge Viper were doing.

“We rented one when they first came out and of course she loved them and I loved them. I never thought I would get one,” her father, Guy Sheets, recalled. He had grown up with two older brothers who had hot rods and quickly became infatuated with fast cars too. “What a blast,” he said about driving a Viper for the first time.

Dad’s love of fast cars spread to his daughter early on. “I had just gotten my license to drive and I learned stick on a ‘66 Chevy pickup,” Laura Sheets explained while looking at the bright red 1999 Dodge Viper GTS with a V10 engine parked in their driveway on a hot sunny August day. “Then I jumped into that,” she said pointing at the Viper.

Two weeks after obtaining her driver’s license, Sheets and her father drove out east to Tennessee for the Viper Owners Invitational where there was drag racing, skid pads and autocross handling courses. “When we got back we were kind of hooked on Dodge,” Sheets explained.

After the Viper, the family also bought a Dodge Neon SRT-4. That car then became Sheets’ full-time car when she went to college.

Since then, Sheets has maintained her love of fast cars. “I did drag racing in it, some track days, some lapping days,” Sheets said about her SRT-4. While she said it was mostly for fun, her father warns, “Don’t let her kid you, she’s serious. I rode with her on the track and I go ‘No! Brake! Brake! Brake!’” The younger Sheets admitted her father was right “I’ve always loved cars going fast,” she said.

The love of fast cars eventually landed Sheets a job working at an exotic car rally in Denver from 2011 to 2015. That then led to a job in Golden for an exotic car touring company which spurred an interest in car photography, Sheets’ current job.

Nowadays, Sheets can be seen trackside taking photos of fast cars. In addition, she also has a new partner in crime on the racetrack. Her fiancé is also a car enthusiast and competes in road racing.

Moving to an electric car in the future is something both Sheets would consider, but only if it is still fast. “I can’t do a Nissan Leaf or a Toyota Prius,” Guy Sheets explained. For him he needs something with a little more juice, maybe a Tesla Model S he said.

But Laura Sheets still admits there is something special about the family’s Viper. “When they stopped making the Viper, I was pretty sad, it’s my favorite,” she stated. With only an estimated 25,000 Vipers left in the world, the Sheets family’s prized Viper is actually rising in value said Guy Sheets. “All these years, I’ve had no major difficulties, no major downtime, no engine work or transmission work,” he said.

With just over 48,000 miles on the Viper, the Sheets family said they have no plans to sell the cherished sports car. Will the daughter-father duo still be tearing up the county roads of southern Larimer County in their Viper when the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor prints its 2,000th issue? Only time will tell.