With the current profusion of what, for the sake of not swearing, we shall call 'tuners of dubious taste', it's often easy to forget that the art of creating spectacularly extravagant, outrageously gauche customised cars ain't exactly new.
Long before nouveau-riche Russians provided the likes of Mansory, Techart, Hamann, Lumma and FAB Design with endless opportunities for creating automotive mutants, there were plenty of tuning and coachbuilding companies doing horrifying - yet fascinating - things to expensive cars.
And, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we have found our way to a place called 1000SEL.com. This, according to its creator, is "the only site on the web fully dedicated to coachbuilt, tuned and modified luxury cars from the 1975-1995 era".
It is a true Aladdin's cave of the sort of epic creations that graced the pages of
magazine in the 1980s, many of which would make even the most gaudy Mansory seem like a paragon of good taste.
Fancy a convertible Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit in lurid yellow? Course you do - and in 1986 you could have had one for just £200k courtesy of Autocostruzione SD. Or how about a W126 500SEC with gullwing doors? That'll be the Sbarro Shahin, then. Perhaps a stretched Range Rover with a Rolls grille is more your thing - Rapport Engineering would have been only too happy to help.
Some of the interior tweaks are pretty special too. The creativity of those heady days didn't stop in the cabins, either. Among our favourites are the cocktail cabinet in the back of the BMW 6-series coupe 'improved' by ABC Exclusive, the various massive tellies (there's even a VCR in a few images), and the obsession with huge amounts of audio equipment (The cliff-face dash of the 'Benny S' S-class and the in-roof stereo on the Buchmann 928 Targa are particular highlights in this respect).
One thing really confuses us, though - what's the idea with putting stick-shifts into all those S-classes?
have a click through to 1000SEL.com
, start making your way through the list of tuners and coachbuilders on the left-hand margin of the 1000SEL.com homepage and tell us your personal favourites - and if you've ever seen any of these beasts out on the road. But please don't blame us if you get no work done today...
Our thanks go to PHer RetroWheels for bringing the site to our attention in the first place, and to Bram Corts of 1000SEL.com for creating such a cornucopia of gaudy riches.