(FORTUNE Small Business) – Nugent Vitallo has spent ten years and $825,000 developing a product he has yet to bring to market. But here's what's most amazing about his saga: No one, he claims, has ever suggested that he's wasting his time. Those who know him and have beheld his beloved contraption--a device that allows drivers to listen to the audio portion of TV broadcasts in their cars--seem to understand his fixation. Or at least feel helpless to intervene. "This is what he likes," rationalizes his wife, Dianne, who compares her husband to a "very creative third-grader.... It's fun to have him in your class." She ought to know; she teaches third grade. Longtime friend Rick DelGiudice, a Chicago lawyer, warns that if inventors like Vitallo registered any discouraging words, America would never have known the pleasure of such simple conveniences as squeezable ketchup bottles. "What Nugent has is an inexpensive luxury," says DelGiudice, 45.

No matter what anybody says about his TVA--it stands for Television Audio--there's no doubt that Vitallo is going to keep going. Why? "I don't understand how anyone can not see the power of this," insists the 65-year-old, who lives and works in suburban Chicago. Sure, he's taken fruitless meetings at Chrysler in Detroit and at NBC in Burbank, Calif. But not so long ago all he had to show them was a wooden prototype. In January he manufactured 200 TVAs, which he plans to install in the cars of anybody who might be willing to invest some of the $1.3 million he's after. "I have to show it to people," he reasons. "Otherwise, they just don't get it."

Vitallo's single-mindedness can be tiring, but it's also enormously appealing. Let the business gurus ruminate on the mysteries of innovation. Is it systematic--rational, even? Really, it just boils down to this: "I don't know how anyone could have persuaded me to quit," Vitallo says. True, someone of his temperament might go awry--allowing his obsession to destabilize his marriage or destroy his finances. But Vitallo can "still put bread on the table," as he says. Back in 1992 a computer services company of which he owned 42% sold its client list to a competitor, yielding Vitallo and his partners about $5 million in commissions over the next decade. Nonetheless, Dianne confesses, "My mouth dropped open pretty wide" upon recently finding out exactly how much Vitallo had invested in what he calls his "baby."

It was born in the 1970s, when Vitallo began stowing an 18-inch TV in the backseat of his convertible so that he could listen to televised sporting events. When John Stiefel, a lawyer he knew, expressed admiration for his ingenuity, Vitallo felt the first pangs of a passion that he would consummate with the TVA. However, notes Stiefel, now 63, "I'm not much of a TV listener." For those who are, the TVA--which comes in three models, with a top price of $149.95--consists of a transceiver hidden behind the dashboard that's connected to the existing radio antenna. The driver uses a tuner, which looks like a remote-control unit, to switch among local broadcast TV stations.

"It's a novelty," summarizes Adriano Pedrelli, president of the Blue Stream Group in Northfield, Ill. Pedrelli, who helps companies raise equity, first met Vitallo in January, then began setting up meetings with possible investors. An owner of five cars, Pedrelli feels uncomfortable analyzing anyone else's obsessions. As for Vitallo's product? "It's amazing what people will buy," says Pedrelli, 45. "People are buying fuzzy covers for their steering wheels. Somebody knew that would be huge."