It's a fully equipped workout center, with two 200-pound weight stacks on rollers, and adjustments to allow more than 250 pulley positions and 100 bench positions. It offers three kinds of resistance exercise: body weight (such as dips and pull-ups), guided by machine (as with a Universal station) and independent bilateral (like using dumbbells). When closed, the Chameleon occupies just 11.3 square feet in a corner and features mirrored doors that actually add to a room's feeling of spaciousness. Optional attachments include not only a Smith machine, leg press, vertical bench and leg extension/leg curl/preacher curl, but also a treadmill and TV or monitor screen — all without adding to the 58 square feet (7 feet, 6 inches on each side) needed when in use. And it comes with a correspondingly ambitious price tag — basic model, $6,995; fully loaded, $11,000.

The Chameleon began to hatch in the mind of Marco Rexach in 1995, when he'd left genetics and was enrolled in a class on new-product development at the University of Texas-Austin. After earning a master's degree in business, he spent several years as a consultant to finance the Chameleon's development, living for two years on $400 a month.

Maybe growing out of that experience, or necessitated by the machine's cost, Rexach, now 34, adds an unusual angle to his sales pitch: What is the value of your room?

"Let's say I have an 11-by-12-foot room," he says, "and the real-estate value of that room is $16,000. If I put in an average full gym for $4,800, and a treadmill for $3,200, it'll take up the entire room. So the total value is $24,000 — and I cannot do anything else with that room." By contrast, he says, a Chameleon with treadmill, leg press and leg extension costs $8,800, and in its closed position takes up space worth $1,100, for a total of $9,900. And when the machine isn't in use, the room can serve as home office, bedroom or something else.

"In an average home, 96 percent of the time you're not using the equipment, if you exercise 1 1/2 hours a day, four times a week," Rexach says. "We allow you to use the machine 100 percent of the time it's out, and when it's not in use, it's fully functional furniture."

Curiously, however, when the doors are closed, a bit of the Chameleon still shows around the edges of the doors. That's intentional, Rexach says, based on research he did in college on motivating people to exercise. "We don't want to cover it too much, or they may forget it's there."

I'd prefer larger doors. If I'd paid $11,000 for it, I suspect I wouldn't have much trouble remembering.

I sought out the prototype at The Super Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, especially curious about the number and ease of cable adjustments when moving from one exercise to another. The first lift felt fine, but my tryout was brief, as even the woman helping demonstrate couldn't quite figure out how to switch to the next exercise.

Rexach says those transitions have been smoothed, taking no more than 30 seconds to convert from furniture to machine or to set up each exercise. Charts and videos help explain the many tower, pulley and bench positions.

Most people would probably get the hang of it. As with the majority of exercise equipment, however, I wouldn't even consider buying something on this scale — not to mention this price — without trying it first. And at the moment, that's not possible.

Although it was named 2001 Nasdaq Sports Product of the Year by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and The Super Show, the Chameleon is only now in production, at a plant in Wisconsin; orders are being taken for delivery starting in December. Rexach, who is based in Puerto Rico, and his sales manager, Mike Herlihy of Woodinville (a former vice president at StairMaster) are planning to take the only existing model on the road next month, giving retailers and perhaps consumers a chance to check it out. They expect to be in Seattle in December. (For details, call 787-789-5736 or 425-788-1009 or go to www.chameleongym.net.)

Molly Martin is assistant editor of Pacific Northwest magazine. She can be reached at 206-464-8243 or mmartin@seattletimes.com.