My work today is a tribute to him — I make bespoke cars for Ferrari — but he was more understated when it came to aesthetics than I am.
"Paganis are really well made, they feel bespoke, each car oozes quality, and then there are the quirky details like the retro leather seat belts on a high-tech car," he said.
While gathering notes and photographs for a recent article in The Times about the Gatto, a bespoke sports car hand-built by Steve Moal of Moal Coachbuilders, I spent a fair amount of time in the family-owned shop in Oakland, Calif.
Some of Rolls-Royce's female customers "bespoke the car in a feminine fashion", he observes, but most of them stick to more traditional designs.
SMB sidewalk is SMB on the sidewalk Roi de France Henri IV, avec lightsaber Could I interest the gentleman in a bespoke toy car?
Still, owning a bespoke machine wouldn't matter one whit if the underlying 760Li weren't a great car to drive, now would it?
Local Motors produces bespoke cars for enthusiasts using a network of 4,500 designers (who compete to produce designs) and dozens of microfactories (which purchase parts on the open market and then assemble them).
"Few people can afford to buy bespoke cars," he says.
Koeningsegg is a tiny company employing 45 people and sold 18 bespoke cars last year, while Saab has around 3,400 employees in Sweden alone and sold 92,000 cars last year.
The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones talked to Markus Kristensen of the Volvo Car Group about its bespoke in-car app offering, learned about online pedal power with Adam Denton of the GSMA, and visited a house of the future put on show by AT&T.
The company recently partnered with Fiat Chrysler to fit its self-driving technology into the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivan, but its efforts to develop a bespoke self-driving car without a steering wheel or pedals point to an intention to develop cars on its own.
