MAcarbon's Blog

John left San Francisco on a Thursday afternoon for a weekend trip to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates,  to install some of our latest carbon fiber parts into not one but two beautiful Ferrari 458 Italias.  After a long 16 hour flight, he arrived!  Our gracious host, Mohammed Al Sayegh, President of ALSA Automotive Engineering (http://www.alsa.cc/) , took John out to an excellent dinner and made family introductions for a warm welcome to the city.  John then headed back to his hotel (at 2 am!) for a “solid” night’s sleep before the work really started…

On Saturday John headed over to ALSA Automotive Engineering to begin work on the first car, the red Ferrari.  John and the ALSA team made great progress, finishing work on the interior and exterior door handles, mirror triangles, passenger grab handle and also removing the OEM center console.  The doors were done first as we had not installed the exterior mirror triangles before.  Best to tackle the unknown early in an install then wait till time is short.  Saturday night our generous host treated John to a tour of the Yas Marina F1 circuit, and they ate at the spectacular Yas Marina 5-Star Hotel.  John even got a ride in Mohammed’s Mercedes SLR McLaren!

Sunday morning it was back to work toiling away on the red 458…until the black one rolled in!  Since this one was only getting carbon fiber for the center console and doors, John took a break from the red Ferrari to complete work on the black one, finishing in time for its owner to drive it back to Dubai that afternoon.  Back on the red Ferrari, by Sunday night the new carbon fiber center console was installed and the OEM dash was completely removed from the car.

On Monday, John finished up by installing the carbon dash and the door sills. A final night out with our host and his friends was a great finale to the trip.  Only 3 hours of sleep Monday night assured that much of Tuesday’s 16 hour return flight to San Francisco was spent snoozing!

Hope you all enjoy the pictures.

Parts all laid out in the shop prior to leaving:

View from the hotel:

The twins:

The DIFFERENCE…you know you want it!

Center consoles assembled and ready to install:

Another angle:

Black 458′s interior, console installed:

Want to see what’s behind a Ferrari 458 dash?  A whole lot of wiring…

In progress…

Red 458 interior, dash parts installed:

Red 458, mirror triangles and door handles installed:

Before:

In progress:

After:

At SEMA 2011, MAcarbon took home two Global Media Awards for our “Mercedes Custom Steering Wheel And Shift Paddle Extensions” (see pic below). The Global Media Awards panel consists of a prestigious group of international journalists serving as judges, with 26 judges from 12 key automotive markets. Each judge carefully reviewed and evaluated items in the New Products Showcase before making their selections. GT Entertainment (France) and Autonews (Germany) magazines recognized our steering wheels as a product they felt would “resonate and appeal most to consumers”. We feel the same, and hope you’ll enjoy and make use of our new version of the wheel configurator to customize your own car!

Build this exact wheel in our wheel configurator (already configured and ready to order!)
Top: Carbon
Middle: No change
Grips: Perforated Leather
Bottom: Suede – Grey
Hub: Perforated with suede – Grey
12 O’clock Ring: Painted 3mm – Silver
Stitching Pattern: Sport – Silver

MAcarbon’s Wheel Configurator enables you to create the perfect custom steering wheel for your exotic or luxury car. Our latest version of the Configurator is now live! We’ve taken our old configuration and streamlined it, adding some new features based on feedback we’ve received from customers.

• A “Start Order Process” button has been added. This makes it easier for the customer to initiate the order. Before, the customer was left wondering what to do once they had finalized their design. Now, the order process can be initialized right from the Configurator.
• We’ve added the ability to display photos of each wheel option. This gives you the ability to preview live photos of many stitching, ring, and material patterns. The rightmost column has icons that activate if there are available pictures.
• We’ve consolidated all our help options into one location at the top right of the screen. This section includes separate buttons for Chat, General Help, and the Wheel Program FAQ.
• The FAQ answers common questions (duh!) about the wheel program directly form the Configurator. These include things such as
• Will a Ferrari 360 wheel fit my 355?
• Will a later model Lamborghini Gallardo wheel fit my earlier model Lamborghini?
• What is a hub?
• etc.
• Thread and ring galleries showing examples of many options have been linked into the Configurator. This pouts all the versions in one place for easy viewing.

Try it out here and let us know what you think!

MAcarbon had a booth at The SEMA Show http://www.semashow.com/ in Las Vegas Nevada for the third year in a row and it was the best show yet.  All of the halls were full with products for any car or truck lover to gush over.  Our booth was in a great location near the Mazdaspeed booth and we had a ton of traffic throughout the entire week.
Lane drove the shop car “Porsche 996 Targa” and John drove to trusty Mazda minivan the 9 hours to Vegas where we met up with our partners from Belgium (Georges and Caroline) and Canada (Andre).  We had a great time visiting with several of our current customers and met many more potentially great customers…It was the best show yet!
We entered our “Mercedes W211 Steering Wheel with extended Carbon Shift Paddles” in the new products section and we came away with two awards for having one of the best new products at SEMA.
Lane was able to sneak away from the booth for a couple hours each day and take these pictures showing the variety that SEMA has to offer to everyone’s taste.
Here are some pictures of the cars with MAcarbon parts at SEMA…See all of our pictures on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LaneSkelton

I was able to drive down to Laguna Seca early yesterday morning in our Porsche 996 targa for Rennsport Reunion. There were amazing cars everywhere!   My favorite part of going to these events is looking at all the cars in the parking lots and being amongst all the other sports car lovers. I was as excited to see a beat up 924 turbo with a pasha interior as I was to see a 917 with 1100 HP.

We just installed these OZ Alleggerita HLT wheels on our Porsche 996 targa shop car (Thanks to Tire Rack for the fast delivery). We are really happy with the look and the weight savings over the stock BBS Sport Design wheels.

The stock wheels weighed about 25 lbs for the front wheels and 29lbs for the rear. The OZ are about 18 lbs for the front wheels and 19.5 for the rears.

Now we just have to lower the car a little to finish off the look!

(2002 Porsche 996 targa with OZ Alleggerita HLT wheels installed)(Close-up of OZ Alleggerita HLT rear wheel with Porsche Center cap)(Tags attached to each wheel with wheel weights…Very Cool!!!)(Stock BBS Porsche wheels)

MAcarbon is lucky to be located less than 2 hours from Monterey, CA where some of the best car events in the world are held every year over a span of 4 days.  We have had a booth at the Concorso Italiano for 7 years running and it is always a highlight of our year.  We get to show off our products and see our customers that we only know from talking on the phone and exchanging emails. 

We arrived at the show on Thursday to set up our booth, then we drove up to the club house to have dinner with the Lamborghini Club of America.  In attendence at the dinner was The legendary Lamborghini test driver, Valentino Balboni and Anthony Ray A.K.A. “Sir Mix-a-Lot”.  A big thanks to Andrew Romanowski for having us at the dinner…It was a blast!

The next day, we went to the show where we were surrounded by Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and other exotic cars.  We counted about 20-25 cars on the green with MAcarbon parts installed, including a Ferrari F50 GT1 (1 of 3).  We made two sets of diffuser fins for this car and it was one of the highlights of the show.

Here are some pictures from the show…Enjoy!

We recently did our first Mercedes McLaren SLR interior.
John and Lane flew to Florida to assist and take picures of this MAcarbon insterior being installed by Renntech.
Thanks to to Nico @ Renntech of putting up with us!

The SLR is a SUPERCAR in every possible way…Lightning fast, eye catching, expensive, but the interior is boring and looks like it would be in a lesser car.  Every body panel on the SLR is made of carbon fiber, so why not add some of that carbon to the interior.  Our customer (ExoticsBoutique.com) gave us free reign with this car and we think it turned out amazing.  We did about 25 pieces in carbon and did the rear storage compartment lid, door panel inserts, handbrake boot and shift knob boot in black suede with red stitching. 

Enjoy the pictures!

MAcarbon recently did some custom parts in conjunction with Manhattan Motorcars, the Lamborghini dealer in NYC, for a Balboni customer of theirs. In addition to the “normal” CF interior, we decided to go a bit farther and make some parts that would really suit the Balboni.

Certainly the stripe is the calling card of the LP550-2, so we took that theme onto the door sills and the steering wheel. The 12 o’clock racing stripe is very popular for most of our customers so we added the thin gold stripe to the left edge to mimic the car. To get more carbon on the wheel, we used the 2009 style of wheel with the carbon 3&9 spokes.

For the sills, we again used the stripe theme. Notice that the sills are asymmetrical so that the gold stripe is oriented with the stripe on the car.

Both of these products can be ordered through MAcarbon for your Balboni.

To see more information on the sills, click here.

http://www.macarbon.com/store/lp550-2-balboni-sills-575.html

For the wheel, this link will open our wheel configurator to the Balboni configuration.

http://www.macarbon.com/wheel_config/conf.php?uid=21,M0c0,M1c0,M0c0,M0c0,M0c0,M1c1,M0c7

MAcarbon Lamborghini LP550-2 Balboni Custom Steering Wheel

MAcarbon Lamborghini LP55-2 Balboni Steering Wheel Stripe

MAcarbon Lamborghini LP55-2 Balboni Custom Door Sills