Photos and Text by Josh Mackey

When you think about Mercedes Benz, you often think luxury, elegance and pure raw performance. Their line up of cars is a truly inspiring fleet, one that is hard not to notice. So what happens when you take one and customize it from head to toe?

You get every man’s dream come true.

You may or may not recognize this 2006 Mercedes Benz CLS 55 AMG because it currently resides in Southern California with its rightful owner, but little do people know, that it was born and raised here locally.  When you take a trio of some of the Northwest’s top builders (some might argue the best in the country) of Adam Nonis of Atom Designs, Dave Ames and Jon Devine, you get a remarkable piece of art mixed with machinery.

The first thing you notice is the paint on the car, the amazing two-tone PPG Candy Apple Red combined with a Black that has red pearl mixed in makes for a really unique touch.  The lines were carefully placed with silver pin striping and capped off with smoked lights. Jon Devine really put in the extra effort to make sure this car stood out amongst its other competitors, and we appreciate his efforts and applaud him on a job well done.  If you can get past the paint, then you’ll start to see where the true labor of love went. Adam Nonis custom-made all the carbon kevlar pieces that are hand-crafted onto the body of the car; this takes a lot of patience and skill to be executed so well. Custom one-off pieces, combined with the Lorinsor body kit, really define the luxury behind this beast.

It doesn’t stop there, since everything from head to toe on this car has been modified to meet the owner’s exact specifications. A list of VRP and SuperSprint performance products remarkably increases the power of the car’s stock V8 past its published 469 horsepower and 516 lb.-ft. of torque.  We had the pleasure of riding in it and listening to the deep growl of the exhaust and we must say that it does not disappoint. To balance out the power increases, HRE 839R wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport tires keep the car firmly gripped to the road while the color-matched Brembo Gran Tursimo rotors are ready for when it needs to stop.

Dave Ames likes interiors, and he’s amazingly good at building truly unique upholstery for any vehicle.  The details are what count when it comes to getting down and dirty with projects like this and we can say he spared no expense. The entire interior is covered in Alcantara with a mix of carbon fiber and carbon kevlar. Custom-pattern stitching and colors really set the panels and interior pieces apart.  Some of the better unique features include a custom center console piece with a built-in flip up monitor. We suppose even your passengers need entertainment as well.

All of these bells and whistles lead us into the audio, which produce amazing bells and whistles if you get what I’m saying. We could list out every single audio product it has installed, but that would bore you. Let us just say that this JL Audio, Memphis Audio and SAVV packed Benz has enough video and audio performance to impress even the most snobbish audiophile, I mean really, how can you go wrong with 6 monitors in the trunk?

Don’t just take our word for it, you can tell this car is amazing just by the pictures themselves, but nothing ever beats seeing this car in person. The car is often seen touring with TWC in car shows throughout the Southwest, we suggest making a stop at one of those car shows and seeing it for your self.

For everything else, see the mod list below, if you can handle it.

[Show as slideshow]

1234►