"Unreasonable." That is the word François Castaing uses to describe the Viper. It’s not his only word, for sure, but it's the one word he keeps coming back to again and again. "Unreasonable."

Castaing is a 44-year-old Frenchman—a grown-up sixties activist, the ar­chitect of Amédée Gordini's turbo racers, and a former manager of Renault's Formula 1 team. His is the résumé of a guy drawn to heat, to making things happen.

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So the U.S. is where you'll find him now. In Detroit. At the Chrysler Corpo­ration. Behind the desk in the office re­served for vice president, vehicle engi­neering. And when he says the Viper is unreasonable, well, who's to argue with the engineering vice president?

Who could argue?

Besides, what else could you say about a 1992 two-seater powered by an 8.0-liter V-10 engine?

What else could you say about a $50,000 car that doesn't have side windows?

What else could you say about a body so voluptuous, so overstuffed, so evoca­tive of zaftig hips and supple loins that you'd swear it's Jayne Mansfield coming back as a sports car?

The Viper is a perfectly unreasonable car. And that's why Castaing and Chrys­ler Motors president Bob Lutz and a handpicked group of some 50 get-it-done guys within the company love it so much. The Viper makes a statement, and what it says is that the Lamborghini Countach is just another two-door hardtop.

"When we tell people about this car," Castaing says, "some of them don't un­derstand at all. We think that's good. If everybody liked it, we wouldn't be push­ing far enough."

This conversation is taking place in the middle of Arizona, where there's still room left to drive. Chrysler is showing its 1991s to the automotive press—and, what the hell, if you had something like the Viper project on the boil in your shop, could you resist showing off a lit­tle? So Chrysler packed a harlot-red ex­ample into a truck and sent it west.

"This is not a prototype," Bob Lutz says. "We're not that far yet. This is an engineering mule."

Lutz has a résumé, too: General Mo­tors, BMW, Ford of Europe. Ford of Dearborn. Now, at 58, he's recently be­come president of the Chrysler Corpora­tion. After all those years of jockeying for his chance to sit in the big chair at some car company, he finally has his job. So it's time to show the world what he can do. He's not wasting a minute. The Viper is his way of raising the Jolly Roger. Now everybody can see that the Chrysler Cor­poration is under new management.

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This time, "new management" means more than just changing the names on the reserved-parking slots. It means a whole new way of creating cars. The 50-man Viper group was selected from vol­unteers within the corporation, largely on the basis of personal want-to. Those 50 guys are completely responsible for the car, right down to sourcing the pro­duction parts. "It's a small, dedicated team of people behaving as if they were the owners of the Viper Car Company," Lutz says. "They have goals and budgets, and so long as they stay within that framework, they're their own bosses."

There's a lot of talk in the business world these days about taking the entre­preneurial approach, but few presidents are brave enough to loosen the reins as much as Lutz has with the Viper group. To avoid the appearance of second-guessing them, he hasn't even driven the car in several months. That is, until this week. Now, under the guise of giving rides to magazine writers, he's getting his first seat time in the V-10 (initial test cars had 360 V-8s).

If Lutz cares a fig what anybody says about him, he sure doesn't show it. He's wearing faded brown Levi cords and a blue windbreaker; his white hair fringes out from under a black IROC cap. There are no handlers in his entourage. He's out front because that's the kind of guy he is, and he talks easily with the writers gathered around the red car.

Chrysler's financial straits are well known. How can the company, in a time like this, spare the cash to develop a car that's unreasonable? Lutz recounts a conversation he had with a young guy in charge of Viper purchasing. The suppli­ers wanted some money up front before they'd start developing parts. Lutz asked him what he'd do if it were his own project, financed with his own money. Well, he'd try to get every parts builder believing in the project, taking a share of the risk, buying into the mission by sup­plying development parts at his own cost in order to get a piece of the action later. Lutz told him to do that for the Viper. And if he found any suppliers who abso­lutely wouldn't go along, then the presi­dent would meet them for lunch.

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"I've had only two lunches." Lutz says.

The Viper may look like a sports car, but it's a lot more than that to Chrysler. Earlier, in a quiet conversation, Castaing called it a rebellion. "Like in the sixties, we are trying to show our parents we can do it our own way." This is a rebellion against the big-corporation procedures that don't work anymore, the Harvard B-school methods, the same old ways that always seem to pull Chrysler back to only a half step ahead of its creditors. The Viper is supposed to jolt the internal or­ganization every bit as much as it piques the auto market.

Castaing went on to describe a small group working quickly and efficiently, re­sponding to the needs of the mission rather than to rigid engineering-depart­ment procedures or the dictates of the beanies. "We need to have a few cars out by Christmas 1991 to prove we can do it in three years, and we need to prove we can make a profit on a small volume of cars," he said. "The pride of Chrysler en­gineering rides on the Viper."

There aren't many gas stations in Ari­zona's high country, and the mule has only a small tank. So pit stops are fre­quent. Chrysler technicians are pouring fuel from red 2.5-gallon cans into a big opening on the Viper's back, just under the roll bar, right where racing sports cars of old had their flip-open lids. The engine man, Dick Winkles, has his black box tapped into the V-10's computer, just checking, the auto engineer's ver­sion of an EKG. Lutz answers more ques­tions. The price will be less than $50,000. Once under way, production will be 15 to 25 cars a day. But Dodge won't run ahead of demand. "The worst thing that could happen would be a Dodge dealer with a sign out front: Vipers in stock, all colors, immediate delivery.’” He wants the car to be scarce, but not a scalper's ticket.

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The technicians tell him the mule is ready. Now it's your author's turn in the right seat. Four-point competition belts await, draped over the buckets. The footwell angles my legs outward, away from the car's center line, a reminder that this is a front-engined car. The instruments take me back to the Cobra: round dials in a simple array. A few of the dials have redlines made of tape across their faces. Stuck in the center of the dash is a handwritten crib sheet showing road speed in the gears at various tach readings.

Lutz pulls down his black cap and lets out the clutch. “This car is extremely easy to drive,” he says. "We have a six-speed, but the engine doesn't care what gear it's in." To prove his point, he shifts to fifth at what seems a dog trot. Sure enough, the engine shrugs its brawny shoulders. So he shifts to sixth, and even he seems surprised by the indifference under the hood. The V-10 just seems to shuffle along.

The side exhausts position one outlet down under my door. In effect, I hear half an engine. It sounds like an even-fire five, rather mumbly at part throttle, turn­ing to a hard buzz as Lutz pushes wide open. We're following a route that gen­erally encircles Mormon Lake. As we crest a hill, the lake becomes a panorama off to the left. The road ahead bends into a huge sweeper. "Look at that," Lutz says, and it takes me about two clicks to realize he doesn't mean the lake.

He double-clutches down two gears and charges into the bend, building the g's. He's crowding the power—I can hear it in the exhaust—his foot pressing down, then giving back some, aching to get the pedal to the metal, feeling for the right time. The man is motivated. Now the buzz goes full hard and we depart the sweeper in a defiant blast of V-10 unrea­sonableness. He flicks into fifth. Wind bullets through the cockpit. We both pull our caps down. The Viper feints left, then right, in response to the morning's gusts. His foot stays down. Nonchalantly, I try to check the speed. The lever is in sixth. The fluttering dash chart shows 119 mph at 3000 rpm. I look over at the tach. We're somewhere north of there and climbing.

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I had in mind to take some notes, about the swelling of the hood into what looks like a red horizon, about the im­mensity of the transmission tunnel, about the grip of the Goodyears. But the wind is shredding my notebook. So I give up on that and turn my mind toward the white-haired man beside me, the one who thrusts this extroverted hunk of car into every bend and immediately begins crowding the power, playing the forces, calling up the g's.

That the president of an American car company would drive like this, is even able to drive like this, is a revelation. After years of Motor City insularity and decline, of presidents who did all their hard driving with golf clubs, we've finally got one who stands on the gas.

Foreign competition has finally awakened the giant. I'm considering the implications as Lutz steers into the parking lot, next to the red cans, and cuts the en­gine. One of the technicians checks his watch. “Sixteen miles in eleven min­utes,” he announces.

A chuckle of satisfaction comes from the president. The Viper may be unreasonable, but not to him.

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