Moscow 2012: the production process of a tuned car

We see tuned cars on Autogespot daily. Tuners always busy developing new bodykits for exclusive cars. But something we never see is how this product is made. During our visit in Moscow, we went to the Topcar’s workshop to see how the cars of Lumma Design and TopCar are made. The Russians are working together with the German company Lumma Design. The cars are built in a relatively small workshop, outside the center of Moscow. This is the same place where TopCar has their office and where the customers come to buy their cars. They can immediately see the products and see how their made. At the office we see all sorts of samples for the interior. Different sorts of wood, carbon fiber and other materials. These samples are there to inspire the customer because every Lumma or TopCar is unique. It often happens that the materials are changed during the building process. TopCar still makes all the cars they ever introduced. From the Advantage GT to the new Inferno. There’s a big demand for the older models of the company. The unique design of the Advantage GT with the round headlights is something we would like to see again, in the future.

The tuner has three different workshops. The first workshop is where they create the interior of the cars, second there’s the workshop where they fabricate the body panels, eventually the interior and body panels arrive at the third workshop, which we paid a visit. This is also the workshop where the car is painted. When we visited the workshop they were working on four cars, three Porsches and a Lumma CLR X 650, based on an X6 M50d. Diesels start to get more and more popular in Russia. But a lot of people still drive a gasoline car. Gasoline is very cheap in Russia, only 0.80 Euros a liter. The X6 gets a complete new bodykit from Lumma Design and they also tune the engine. Further, two Advantage GT’s are in maintenance, one copy even has 700 hp!
Tuning a car can be very easy, but at the same time very difficult. The GT bodykit is a bodykit which you can easily mount on the original attachment points of the Porsche Cayenne bumpers. The GT has no complete widebody kit but individual components which make the car look better. Including a new front bumper, rear bumper, sideskirts, diffuser, hood, two spoilers and of course ADV.1 wheels. The Advantage GT, Stingray GTR and GTR2 are more complicated. The complete bodywork of these models is made by hand. A very labor-intensive process. This report gives you an impression of the proceedings when building a tuned car. We use TopCar and Lumma Design as an example but most tuning companies have almost the same process.