Scott Devon, CEO of Los Angeles-based Devon Motorworks and owner of Michigan-based Cole's Frozen Foods (which bills itself as "Home of the Original Frozen Garlic Bread"), doesn't think so. Devon is already touting the GTX as the "next great American supercar," and says he expects to build and sell 36 cars a year from his Southern California headquarters.
The GTX actually started life several years ago as the VR Concept, from the pen (and computer) of Swedish designer Daniel Paulin, the former Ford designer who created the Focus C-Max and founded Paulin Motor Company in Gothenburg in 2005. Images of the VR Concept, with its unusual articulating doors, can be seen on Paulin's Web site.
Earlier this year, Devon made an unsuccessful bid to acquire the tooling and rights to the Dodge Viper, which Chrysler at the last minute yanked from the scrap heap and transferred to new owner Fiat.
Not surprisingly, the specs for the Devon GTX sound suspiciously Viperesque: a wheelbase of 98.8 inches, coil springs and gas-pressurized shocks at all four corners and an 8.4-liter V10 engine under the hood, driving the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox and a limited-slip differential.
In the Devon GTX, the engine has been tweaked, with output nudged to 650 horsepower.
Inside Line says: Tell us again why a Devon GTX is worth $410,000 more than a Viper. — Paul Lienert, Correspondent
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