Bali is better known for beach clubs and cocktails than precision engineering. But the Hindu-majority island has a long and storied history of craftsmanship that has evolved over the centuries from ceremonial and religious objects.
With the rise of tourism in the 20th and 21st centuries, these skills, passed through generations, have evolved into thriving cottage industries specialising in painting, textiles, stonemasonry, silversmithing, carpentry and, now, car making. “Balinese are used to carving wood and sculptures, so it's much easier to train them to work with modern materials like aluminium and plastic than it is to train someone from the ground up. They are very creative people,†says Aria Dito Warganegara, operations manager at Tuksedo Studio, Bali's first indigenous car maker. Instead of making modern cars, Tuksedo Studio produces replicas of classic cars from the 1950s and 1960s like the Porsche 356 coupe, Aston Martin DB5, Mercedes-Benz 300SL and the beloved Toyota 2000GT, a limited-production two-seat tourer launched in 1965, with only 351 units made until the model was discontinued in 1970. But, unlike modern car factories that are full of robots and computers, the cars at Tuksedo Studio are almost entirely handmade.
The process begins with carving a wooden frame, or “buckâ€, from photos and diagrams of classic cars downloaded from the internet. Once complete, the buck provides a precise three-dimensional surface for the next step: the forging of a wire frame. This, in turn, creates a negative mould that allows craftsmen to weld handmade aluminium body panels on to the frame. Then, slowly over time, seals, windows, pop-up headlight mechanisms, hand-stitched leather seats, wooden steering wheels and thousands of other components are painstakingly manufactured and fitted to the frame. “The hardest parts to make are the smaller accessories,†Warganegara says. “Things like gearsticks, window frames and the dashboard, of course, because they have so many smaller parts. We buy the cigarette lighter and the action buttons, but we cut the trim in-house, print the background, and we make and assemble the gears that go inside the speedometer and tachometers. One dashboard alone takes months to complete.†Warganegara is also Tuksedo Studio's tour guide. Every day, up to 100 people come to the car maker's showroom and workshop in a village east of the capital Denpasar to marvel at the cars and see how they're made. Tours are only $12 per head but if you're thinking of buying a car, think again. With all the painstaking labour that goes into making one — it takes 15-18 months to make one car — they cost an arm and a leg. Tuksedo Studio's least expensive car, a replica Toyota 2000GT, will set you back $350,000. A replica Mercedes-Benz 300SL is $355,000, while a replica Aston Martin DB8 has a price tag just shy of half a million dollars. Yet there's no shortage of people wanting to buy one. The waiting list is three months. “In Australia, you can import a used or classic or vintage car if it's more than 25 years old,†Warganegara says.
“But in Indonesia, you either have to buy a new one that has never been registered, which is practically impossible; import one through the black market; or build one from scratch like we do. That's how we were able to find a market for our cars, and not only in Indonesia. We have customers in the Philippines and Dubai. We've even sold one to a customer in the UK.†fact file
+ Tuksedo Studio is at 356 Jalan Tukad Tampuagan, Ketewel, Bali. Studio tours take one hour and cost $12. tuksedostudio.com
