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Alin Opriţescu from Piteşti discovered his passion for car tuning in 1995. At the time he was only 15 years old, but in 2000 he managed to customize a car, a Volkswagen Scirocco. The process was carried out in stages.
“I went to make some thresholds for some guys that made fiberglass. They saw that I was good at it and told me not to give them more money, to work a week in exchange for the equivalent of the thresholds. Then I worked for another week, and then I worked for three weeks for a salary. There were three associates, but one of them, who was the most talented, had joined me. I preferred to leave before they quarreled, “says the man.
“This is where my ascension began”
At one point, the Pitesti man bought a successful Ford Mustang for $ 2,000 and took it to his grandparents in Olt, in Scorniceşti, for repair; there he had a metal hut, built by his father.
“A boy discovered that I was repairing with fiberglass and he brought me some bars bought from Rieger, which was then the most popular tuning company in Europe. He came with a bar to fix it, I asked him to let me copy it, to make a mold. He left me and then gave me the front bar and thresholds. So I made the first set: front bar, rear bar, thresholds. They looked great! ”Alin recalls.
There followed a time when more and more people from Slatina discovered that Alin does car tuning and has talent. Naturally, he began to have more and more customers with more and more expensive and beautiful cars. “This is where my ascension began,” says the young man.
A business that has taken off
Alin Opriţescu had a lot of work and made many efforts to start his own business in the field of car tuning. One of the biggest challenges he faced was the difficulty in acquiring raw materials: “I didn’t have molds, I only had a month and a half of experience. I was doing everything with my imagination. It’s hard to go alone. ”
One of the cars tuned in Alin Opriţescu’s workshop PHOTO: personal archive
However, when the business began to gain momentum, Alin was able to take care of other details. The first serious investment was to build a garage next to the existing cabin, a space of 60 square meters, which cost him about 4,500 lei and in which he worked for six years. Later, also in Scorniceşti, in 2009, he built a 360 square meter room, with a paint booth, with an elevator, with all the new tools.
He worked alone for a long time, only in 2014 did he find help. “It was very difficult, there were many requests, but you couldn’t find people to really help him at work,” says Alin Opriţescu. You currently have five employees in your company and you are satisfied.
A top car
One of the most spectacular cars Alin tuned in in the early 2000s was a Nissan 310 ZX, which made the covers of many magazines, including the Ford Tuning website and a television commercial. It had something special: the front of the Nissan 310 ZX was made like the Lamborghini LP640. Nissan customization at that time cost 1,500 euros.
Another impressive transformation was made on an Opel Astra Bertone, which won five awards in France, including best paint. Alin also fondly remembers a Mercedes SLK and a Chrysler 300C, on which he worked with such care and meticulousness.
The most expensive tuning that he has done so far has been 9,000 euros and has consisted of the exterior body kit and the paint of an Audi A8. Alin also tuned, also for 9,000 euros, a Porsche Cayenne.
Mc Laren from Dubai painted with removable paint PHOTO: Alin Opriţescu’s personal archive
Alin Opriţescu’s talent and passion have crossed the country’s borders. In 2016, he was specially called to Dubai to paint a McLaren with removable paint.
“It’s not a normal paint, it’s a paint that, if you want, you can remove it after a while. The client was a sheikh, and the McLaren I painted was his cheapest car, costing around 200,000 euros. He also had a three million euro McLaren in the garage, ”says Alin, who says the sheikh found it to be considered the best removable paint applicator in Europe and that’s why he contacted him. The painting of the sheikh’s car lasted seven days and cost 3,500 euros.
A month after being in Dubai, Alin was called to Belgium to paint an Audi RS6 with the same type of removable paint. “I turned her into a chameleon, like at the McLaren in Dubai,” he says.
A tuned Nissan belonging to Liviu Vârciu PHOTO: Alin Opriţescu’s personal archive
Many expensive car owners from Great Britain, Germany and Italy come to Scorniceşti for Alin to do his tuning. He also has loyal clients from Romania, Liviu Vârciu being one of them: “I painted five cars for him. First I painted a Nissan 300ZX, then a BMW 850, an Alfa Romeo, another Nissan 300ZX, and a Mazda Miata. He worked mainly on the tuning of a Chevrolet Camaro, three months, and an Audi A8, about two months, in both cases special projects, especially on the paint side.
Very often the brands needed for tuning are Audi and BMW, but I also had customers with the Dacia Logan. In addition, he restored cars. He worked primarily on the restoration of a 1968 Ford Taunus, a car that now belongs to him. “It had the whole floor rusty and the strength structure. I had to redo them from scratch,” says Alin.
The young entrepreneur had many offers to work abroad, but none interested him: “I earn more money with another business. Service is secondary, it’s more of a passion, it hasn’t been a source of income for about ten years. If you want to do quality and provide the customer with good materials, tuning is not profitable. It is very meticulous and unappreciated work. I wasn’t interested in making a lot of money from tuning, I was interested in building a name in the field and using good materials, and the cars that I make last for many years. “
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