Question: How do you fit 24-inch wheels in the front, and 30-inch wheels in the back of a CL-Class Mercedes-Benz?
Answer: A lot of expanding foam.
The car you see here, which was at one time just another two door Mercedes, was turned into this big red monster by a Lithuanian body man named Audronis Gestautas, who formed a brand called AG Excalibur so that he could make cars like this.
Besides the over-the-top exterior, the interior is covered in Swarovski crystals, and was custom formed using a healthy serving of cardboard!
Sadly, the Mercedes was not the only Lithuanian car to go under the knife, as a tuning shop named Lithuanian National took a BMW 6 Series and also modified it to within an inch of its life:
What do they put in the water over there?
[Via: World Car Fans]
[Via: BMW Blog]
SEMA was, as expected, amazing.
If you’ve never been (given the chance, I think everyone should go), then picture this: More automotive eye candy than you can imagine, and I walked around for two full days and still didn’t see everything. It’s that big.
Though the name of the game is new and improved, and everyone is trying to one-up the next to grab that photographer’s eye, there were a couple trends that I noticed:
- Orange is the new black. Orange was definitely the go-to color scheme for any car that was trying to show off, and even cars that were painted other colors seemed to have some sort of orange accent.
- Bigger is better. To grab your attention, rims have now crossed the 30” barrier, and the more gaudy, the better. There were rims with TVs in them, rims with solid gold bars in them, rims with jewels in them, and rims that were painted just about any color you can imagine. If you can dream it, someone else can put it on a rim.
- Heat-treated is the new chrome. To add to the wheel spectrum, many manufactures are now offering a “heat-treat” option, which takes your shiny new wheel and adds some color to it with a heat-treating process. I like the look, so I hope to see more of it.
- Horsepower numbers need four digits to impress. With everyone pumping 300 horsepower out of their Civic, it takes something special to show off now, which is why many of the tuners were demoing cars that easily passed through the thousand mark in the horsepower column.
- Conversions are big. Four door cars became two door, two door cars became four door, convertibles became single seat roadsters, and some cars just lost all hope of being original and simply transformed into something new entirely. There are definitely some automotive Dr. Frankensteins out there, and for the right funds, they can build you just about anything that you can think of.
Though there were many cars that impressed, my favorite car of the show was easily the Tractorri; a half Mustang, half Lamborghini concoction that looked like it just stepped off the showroom floor. The execution was flawless, and it was hard to believe that this car started out as two entirely different machines. Though I couldn’t decide if it should be called a Forghini Musardo, or a Lambord Gallardang, it was easy to decide that John Haugh (the owner of the Tractorri) is one lucky man.
Starting with a 2007 body in white Ford Mustang, the Tractorri soon began to take shape. The 5.0-liter, 520 hp Lamborghini V10 was midmounted behind the front seats, and then mated to the Gallardo’s four-wheel drive, paddle-shifted E-gear transmission, and Aluminum double wishbone suspension.
Other amenities include 8 piston front and 4 piston rear brakes, custom wheels, Lamborghini interior, PPG paint, and Gallardo taillights (to remind fellow drivers that there is a reason you’ll only ever see the back of this car).
If heaven has cars, then they all look like this, because the Tractorri was simply stunning.
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