It’s billed by its creators as the next great supercar. So it’s no surprise to find that the Devon Motorworks GTX owes more than a nod to America’s last “great supercar”, the Dodge Viper.

When the wraps are pulled off its curvaceous carbon-fibre bodywork at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elégance in California today, the world will see what appears to be an entirely new automobile. What the casual admirer may not realise is that beneath the skin beats the heart of a Dodge Viper. And it’s that thumping great 8.4-litre V10 pumping station that has (according to the car’s creators) powered the GTX to record lap times for a production car at two of America’s toughest race circuits: Laguna Seca and Willow Springs.

So it’s fast. But is it made of the right stuff? The sort of stuff that could lure Aston Martin and Ferrari drivers to buy a place in its sculpted driver’s seat, beneath the dramatic scissor doors? The stuff that could have them reaching for their Montblanc pen and signing on the line of a cheque made out for £300,000?

If you are judging on looks alone, then the answer is an emphatic “yes”. With its two-tone paint scheme and its smooth lines, uninterrupted by unsightly bumpers or garish wings, this model proves that Devon Motorworks, the little-known marque that makes it, understands supercar dress sense.

It may be built around the Viper’s basic architecture, but the team behind it has, to all intents and purposes, come up with a clean-sheet design that looks like nothing else on the road. If all any prospective purchaser cared about was turning more heads on Cap Ferrat than other drivers, then this is the car to do it.

So who, exactly, is behind it? Devon Motorworks was one of the few public bidders for the Dodge brand when it went on the block last year during the sell-off of Chrysler. In the end, the brand went unsold, so Devon settled for the next best thing. It will use donor cars — brand-new Dodge Vipers — and strip them back to the engine and chassis (the bits that give the Viper its fangs) before transforming them into GTXs.

So where has Devon Motorworks sprung from? Unsurprisingly, from the pockets of a wealthy founder. Scott Devon, the owner, is a fast-food magnate with a taste for fast cars.

His Devon Racing company, based in Irvine, California, specialises in preparing Dodge Vipers for competition; it has been a long-held ambition to raise the game further and take on the supercar builders.

Daniel Paulin, a Swedish designer, was brought in to do the styling. His previous work included the Ford C-Max and the rather less practical Ford FAB1, the shocking-pink six-wheeler commissioned for the Thunderbirds film.

The result is a long way from being just a rebodied Viper. The exterior of the GTX bears a close resemblance to Paulin’s VR (virtual reality) concept car, first aired in 2007.

Touch-sensitive door handles activate the scissor doors, revealing a two-seat cabin with far more comfort than you would find in a regular Viper. The cheap and uncheerful Viper interior has vanished, replaced by something altogether more modern and tasteful. Paulin has produced a minimalist muscle car interior that focuses on the key controls: a chunky three-spoke wheel, a cue-ball-topped gearstick and a big stereo with kitsch twin VU meters.

There’s better still to come when you lift the bonnet. Whereas the most recent ACR Viper racer topped out at 600bhp, the GTX has had its engine tuned to produce 650bhp. It’s still the cartoon-sized 8.4-litre V10, just with better breathing apparatus and more efficient, lower-friction innards. The only bit of the chassis that a Viper driver might recognise is the welded steel frame. Other than that, it’s all new. There’s a tubular spaceframe, a one-piece carbon-fibre superstructure and on top of that the all-carbon-fibre body panels. So it should be stiffer than a safe, and substantially lighter.