Photos - The New Specialty Car Craft and the amazing LG Transport Truck

Photos sent to me of the new Specialty Car Craft building on La Cienega Blvd. with LG Transport out front loading and unloading a few exotics.

We have a Lotus 260 in for repair now in addition to four other Lotus cars, a brand new Gallardo, a black Ferrari F430 with six on the floor, two Rolls Royce including a new Drophead, and many other cars in for paint and service.

We're almost ready for the official grand opening.

Thanks, Craig, for the photos.
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Here's the story that accompanied our Go-Green Murcielago in a recent magazine:

Specialty Car Craft Goes Green:
The Amazing Matte Green Murcielago


Specialty Car Craft is located in Los Angeles near Beverly Hills. This unique auto body shop deals exclusively with the finest cars in the world. The bodywork and painting that they do is exquisite, and their imagination is never ending. In this case, a beautiful blue Lamborghini Murcielago has just been turned into an amazing matte green creation.

Steve Saghdejian is the owner of Specialty Car Craft -- a pioneer and a pacesetter -- the dean of paint. He constantly reads about automobile painting techniques from the past, meets with the top paint professionals from companies like PPG and Glasurit, and visits with Lamborghini and Ferrari paint technicians. Steve loves to sit down with his customers and personally discuss their automotive needs and desires; he especially enjoys coming up with radical new ideas for cars that are brought to the shop.

In this case, Steve’s latest project is titled "Go Green: Lamborghini Murcielago," not only because of the special color of the car, but because of the materials that were used. For this build, Steve decided to use paint that is found in a category called “Natural Paints and Finishes.” These are paints made from natural raw ingredients such as water, plant oils and resins; plant dyes and essential oils; natural minerals such as clay, chalk, and talcum; milk casein, natural latex, bees’ wax; and earth and mineral dyes. Water-based paints are the safest for human health and for the environment -- they give off almost no smell. So the decision was made to use water-based paint in a Lamborghini color called Ithaca Verde applied as a matte finish. The result is a head-turner that screams for attention.

Steve then properly lowered the car, fashioned a custom exhaust, attached a custom Tecnocraft front lip, painted the brake calipers, and gave the car some great black accents. He then added a high performance computer chip to accommodate the upgraded exhaust system, and a completely new black leather, black Alcantara and green stitching interior was installed.

Nobody makes better wheels for high-end cars than GFG. They have been doing it the right way for many years and their styles are always setting new trends. Steve felt that 20” front and rear was the way to go. Giovanna GFG series 3-piece forged California wheels were built and finished in gloss black. Pirelli tires were used with a 235/30/20 in the front and 345/25/20 in the rear. The result is absolutely stunning.

Special thanks go out to another sponsor, Al & Eds Autosound in West Hollywood, California, and its owner, Elie Rothstein. His motto is to “always make sure to achieve the customer’s requests.” Here is what he installed to make this Lamborghini play cleaner and louder than any other one out there:

*Focal, a sponsor of this project, provided sound equipment including 165KRX3 component 3-way speakers in the doors, an extra pair of Focal Power series tweeters, and two shallow 12” woofers, one in the passenger firewall area and one behind the passenger seat. Both subs were installed in custom fiberglass enclosures. Three Focal amplifiers were installed, totaling over 2000 watts of clean amplifier power.

*Scosche, also a sponsor of this project, provided their finest speaker, power, and ground wire, plus RCA interconnects.

*An Alpine AM/FM/CD iPod player was installed in the dash.

*A Rockford Fosgate 3sixty.2 EQ/Processor was added offering 153 bands of equalization, time alignment, sub woofer control knob, and the ability to perfectly tune the sound system.

The doors were customized to fit the 3-way component plus the extra tweeters, while maintaining a stock appearance. The enclosure in the passenger foot well/fire wall was covered in carpet to be completely stealth, while the enclosure behind the seat was upholstered to match the new interior design. Under the front bonnet, the Focal amplifiers were custom installed and green LED lights were used to illuminate the frosted plexiglass edging.

At Al & Eds, Elie likes to do something special to surprise his clients. Steve is an avid cigar smoker, so Elie decided to customize the center console and create a motorized cigar holder. When the center console is opened, it reveals an S.T. Dupont lighter, cigar cutter and a leather wrapped cigar holder. When the lighter is removed, it activates the motorization to lift the cigar holder and reveal the cigars. When the lighter is replaced, it activates the motorization to put the cigar holder back in its place.

Once the car was finished, Steve drove the “Go-Green: Lamborghini Murcielago” through the streets of Beverly Hills, causing a near riot. He was chased by teenage tourists down Rodeo Drive, and once parked, the car drew an enormous crowd.

Photographs appeared on the Internet and e-mails started pouring in: “Amazing, a million times better, I love it in this color. Please congratulate Steve for me.” “That’s one hot Murcie!” “Absolutely amazing! Definitely one of my favorite Lambos of all time! Steve, you are the man.” “That looks great! The color is amazing and I really like the interior stitching.” “You have to see this car in person...you cannot tell that this car in a previous life was actually a different color. The attention to detail that SCC delivers shows very well.” “Love the fact the paint is good for the environment!” “You make going green look GOOD.”

In 2005, when Steve decided to re-introduce retro-look matte finishes found in the 1960s, it was very risky. The first was a “Stealth” matte black Lotus Elise followed by a matte black Rolls Royce Phantom which broke the industry’s mold and sent it right off the charts. Never before had such an expensive car received such a notorious paint job. Since then, SCC has re-painted cars in matte charcoal, matte pink, matte grey, matte blue, matte red, matte orange, even matte white on a Lamborghini Gallardo. A customer recently decided to have SCC paint his Jaguar XJ220S, one of five in the world, once known as the “million dollar Jaguar.” Steve has decided to paint the car in a beautiful matte charcoal Reventon-look finish.

Other competitors and even manufacturers have followed suit which makes Steve proud. In 2005, no automobile manufacturer was offering a factory matte paint job; now, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bentley, and Mercedes-Benz are offering factory matte finishes on their cars, thanks to a retro-look given a new life by SCC.

Steve is a member of the Southern California Exotic Car Club (SCECC), a car club consisting mostly of Lamborghinis and Ferraris as well as an assortment of Maseratis, Aston Martins, Ford GTs and Vipers. Most recently, he received an award from the 11-99 Foundation and the 580 Squad Club for his dedication to their charities and causes. He is known for sponsoring incredible drives and race-track days all over California, in association with such websites as Lambo Power, Ferrari Chat, and Luxury4Play.

The Specialty Car Craft website (www.specialtycarcraft.com) is filled with photographs of Steve’s newest creations, including “SCC Project VI: B-52 Bomber Ferrari 360,” “SCC Project XI: The Iron GT Custom Bentley,” and “SCC Project XII ‘Evil 4RE’ Ferrari F430.” He invites everyone to stop by anytime to talk cars and see what’s new at the shop.

Future plans for the “Go Green: Lamborghini Murcielago” include adding a twin-turbo set-up to increase the output to 800 horsepower.

The new Specialty Car Craft shop is located at 1862 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, California, 90034, just minutes from Beverly Hills. Our phone number is 310.838.5551.
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Our Grand Opening is coming up soon!

 

Cool!