On the muscle ; It's what comes after Viper that drives new Chrysler performance group.(Brief Article)

Overshadowed by the sprawling DaimlerChrysler headquarters complex in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the one-story building housing the Chrysler Group's Performance Vehicle Operations doesn't look like much.

But it is here, where treadbare Neon SRT-4s return from turbocharged road tests, and the Viper clutch plate bin is always precariously near empty, that the divergent strands making up Chrysler performance and racing efforts are being tied together.

``Tires,'' mutters PVO vehicle development chief Herb Helbig. ``We go through a lot of tires.''

The group-and more than two dozen of its 100-plus engineers and designers-traces its roots to the 1970s when Carroll Shelby served as a performance consultant to Chrysler. That relationship was cemented in the 1980s when Shelby and Chrysler formed Shelby Automobile Inc., a California-based enterprise that was responsible for much of Chrysler's performance effort during that decade. Among the cars produced by Shelby Automo- bile were the Dodge Omni GLH (Goes Like Hell), Shelby Charger, Shelby Lancer, Shelby CSX and finally, a V8-powered Dakota pickup.

Through the '90s, members of the group came together on projects for Team Viper and Team Prowler, and eventually all performance work was merged into a single Specialty Vehicles Engineering group. Operating in the shadows within the new DaimlerChrysler corporate structure, the performance group found its patron saint in DaimlerChrysler chief operating officer Wolfgang Bernhard, the former head of Mercedes' AMG performance group.

PVO's official debut came in January at the Detroit auto show, with two near-production concepts: Dodge Ram SRT-10, a full-sized truck powered by the same 8.3-liter V10 found in the Viper; and the 215-hp turbo-four Dodge Neon SRT-4.

``What we were doing at Shelby Automobile Inc. is what we're trying to do with Performance ...