The project began as a sketch on paper. The looks came from the Pobeda, one of the most stylish cars of its era; the underpinnings came from a modern car.
The vintage‑looking body received powerful drivetrain components and other assemblies from modern cars. The donor was an E500 (W124). Its heart is an upgraded 5‑litre V8, tuned to roughly 400 hp. The automatic gearbox also came from the donor but was reworked — five brake bands instead of three — and the axles were tuned too.
At first we bought an original Pobeda for the project, but it was no good: time and rust had left the body completely unusable.
After a long and persistent search we found another body in decent condition.
Once we had enough panels, it was time for the bodywork. The Pobeda was assembled literally piece by piece, and many parts were remade more than once until they were perfect.
Building a car from scratch is exhausting. Only people truly in love with what they do can keep at it day after day.
What kept the project moving despite all the difficulties was a team of top‑level professionals.
Little by little the body began to look like the original sketch.
The load bed turned out to be large. A metal cover would have been far too heavy, so we made it from fibreglass.
The Pobeda is a fully electronic car: no ignition key, and plenty of hydraulics and pneumatics.
We gradually started running the car in. Then came the primer — and its baptism of fire: from Kyiv to Sevastopol and back.
The car performed well, and we settled on the final colour scheme.
With the exterior finished we headed to our first show. Visitors gave the project a very warm welcome — awards and plenty of admiration.
The interior was a separate challenge. Since the car was built from scratch, so was its interior. The body was hand‑made, which made fitting the cabin parts harder than on a production car. We started with bare metal, 3D‑scanned the cabin, built a CAD model, then designed the parts and cut them on CNC machines.
Modelling composite, refined 3D topology, more design work — and we started getting parts with a precise fit.
Unlike many show‑only builds, the Pobeda was always meant to be a real, living car. We have even taken part in races — there is no class for us, so we were grouped with a Ferrari. We are still losing to it, for now :)
Journalists have written about us more than once.
But this is not the end of the story. The Pobeda keeps evolving as experience lets us replace old solutions with better ones. And the next big project is on its way. Stay tuned!