On California's open roads with an American 'great' now heading for Europe.
The Dodge Viper is, believe it or not, about to go on sale in Europe and is causing much debate among the car-anorak fraternity.
Die-hard lovers of American performance argue the Viper is the quintessential muscle car - an iron fist wrapped in a fibreglass glove like a wonderful, star-spangled Baseball bat.
Those prostrate at the altar of light-weight and cutting-edge technology say the Viper is nothing more than a crude mallet, designed with a crayon for beer-swilling Neanderthals. Valid viewpoints both but, frankly, I don't much care how many butterfly valves or multi-link suspension arms a car has, or even what it's made of.
If I'm smiling from ear to ear then it's a good car. If it bores me, tries to kill me or falls apart in my hands, it's a bad car.
Purely in the interests of research, I ask DaimlerChrysler if they have one available. Surprisingly, they immediately reply telling me they'll leave one at LAX airport for me, and I really thought no more about it until a few weeks later when the airport shuttle bus rounded the corner and I caught my first glimpse of the big, red Dodge Viper SRT-10 sulking in the corner of the car park.
It eyeballed me with such contempt that immediately my hands started to shake and my intestines began to grumble anxiously. Few cars possess the spine-chilling presence of a Viper and the last time I felt this nervous getting into a car, it was an '87 Fiesta shod with 135/13 remould tyres piloted by my freshly-licensed but very later for work sister on a mucky Monday morning.
Sitting in the Viper only makes me feel worse because the elbow-high centre console is more than a foot wide and the pedals are packed closely together and offset to the left. This is to make space for the V10 engine and accompanying transmission, which doesn't quite fit under that landing-strip bonnet. Gulp! Ten cylinders, just like the F1 cars and new BMW M5. But that's where the similarities end.
The Viper's engine is ye olde-school - a commercial unit with a single cam and pushrod valvetrain, driving the rear wheels via a six-speed manual gearbox. There's no paddle-shift here. No stability or traction control. ABS is as far as the electronic drivers aids go.
Hell, you even have to get out and drop the roof manually. Despite its $80,000 price tag, the Viper doesn't offer much in the way of luxury refinements or advanced gizmos.
Instead, if offers good old-fashioned displacement: 8.3-litres, to be precise, enough for 500 bhp and 525 lb/ft of torque which is quite a lot in a car weighing a reasonable 1540 kg. 0-60 mph happens in around 3.9 seconds and top speed in excess of 190 mph. Smart numbers, despite the dim-witted approach.
With all this running through my head, I turn the key and hit the red 'Start' button. The engine erupts; snarling to life and shaking the car as it settles into an uneven idle. Now I'm really, really bricking it.
Every time I touch the throttle, it rocks on its stiff springs. It makes a noise that you'd imagine a cantankerous lion would make if you grabbed him by the undercarriage and squeezed hard. And with the exhaust pipe just ahead of the rear wheels and about a foot-and-a-half from my nostrils, I'm not sure if it's imminent death or the exhaust gasses that are making me ill.
I swallow hard, forcefully shove the gearlever into first and let the heavy clutch out smoothly. It pulls away cleanly, rolling into the Californian sunlight without the slightest crankiness and chugging along happily with the traffic on Sepulveda Boulevard, furiously working my left quad all the way.
LA completely ignores the Viper. When I drove a John Cooper Works MINI here a while back, everyone wanted to know about the car and complimented my 'ride'. Same story with the new 911, which had people sprinting across petrol stations for a closer look. But it seems that people actually try not to look at the Viper, as if it's just too much even for this town.
On the upside, people get the hell out of its way on the highway and nobody tailgates me, either. I make great time heading east on I-105, cruising along at 70 mph in 6th gear with the engine ticking over at just 1,800 rpm. And when I say ticking, I mean ticking. The engine tappets bring back more memories of my sister's old Fiesta.
Off in the distance I see mountains and, despite not having a map, I aim for them in search of the kinds of roads we Europeans are more accustomed to. It takes only three hours and a tank of premium petrol to find Mountain Avenue which lead me to Mount Baldy and some of the finest roads I've ever driven on.
The valley road eventually winds through a national park, which today offers refuge to a different kind of wild beast. Without fear of attack from traffic and troopers, I can let the Viper loose and, to my surprise, there's much more to it than just raw grunt.
Steering is sharp and very responsive, but it's rendered a bit numb by over-assistance. The engine revs eagerly, without the frantic screech of prima-donna supercars, while the brakes bite consistently hard and never show signs of fade. The clutch and gearbox mesh perfectly, albeit in a physically exerting fashion, and even though I only had the courage to use about 40 per cent of the Viper's potential, I came away impressed.
It's well balanced with faithful handling, makes a wonderful sound and feels like it will last forever. By the time the low-fuel light calls an end to play for the day, I'm no longer scared of the Viper. I wouldn't exactly call myself at home in it, either, but it's not the monster it first appears.
In a country where fuel is less than €0.40 a litre, whether your 500 bhp comes from a 3-litre or a 5-litre or an 8.3-litre engine is irrelevant. Yes, the motor's pre-historic but it's still rapid and your granddad can fix it.
No, the interior's not very attractive but then it's half the price of comparable rivals and it seems pretty solid. Even without the suppleness of an Italian mount, the Viper's still light on its feet and surprisingly engaging.
It's the supercar for the average Joe - uncomplicated and brutal but no less fun for that. I'm exhilarated, alive and nothing has fallen off. And I'm grinning from ear to ear.
Must be a nice car, then. Or maybe it's just the fumes.