The extremely online car fan set will surely need no introduction to Mansory, the German outfit best known for festooning exotic cars with garish body kits, flamboyant interior makeovers, and cheesy wheel upgrades. To everyone else, just Google “Mansory” followed by your favorite supercar or luxury SUV. We apologize in advance. Anyway, though Mansory’s projects tend to inspire unanimous revulsion amongst our seasoned staff of auto hacks, its latest somehow split our number. More surprising, that latest Mansory project is based on the Tesla Cybertruck, one of the most polarizing vehicles introduced this century. Call this group therapy, or maybe some kind of coping mechanism for making sense of it all, but we just had to pit two of our editors against each other in a for-and-against battle over what to make of this most unusual Mansory creation. Here are those takes, by Christian Seabaugh (for) and Jonny Lieberman (against):
In the Winning Column…
Christian Seabaugh: Mansory has a long, storied history of taking objectively beautiful cars and ruining them with its… special touch. Just look at this poor Ford GT, Ferrari 488, or Lamborghini Aventador. Well, after 36 years of failure—or for those whose taste runs upside-down, success—the infamous German “atelier” has finally found the one vehicle its designers can improve: the Tesla Cybertruck.
Many pixels have been wasted on explaining what, exactly, Tesla chief Elon Musk and head designer Franz Von Holzhausen were striving for with company’s wedge-shaped electric pickup truck, but there’s no denying the Cybertruck has become both a cultural lightning rod and touchstone, depending as much on, frankly, who you voted for, as much as your tolerance or hunger for attention.
The Cybertruck has been relatively popular despite its polarization. In Los Angeles county, for instance, most can’t go a day without seeing multiple fingerprint-stained gleaming ironic odes to excess squeezing down a narrow street, parked in an Erewhon parking lot, or bobbing between lane markers on the freeway. This familiarity has made what was promised as the pickup of the future already look dated and pedestrian, frankly. Boring, and childlike even. A far cry from how the (mostly) self-described high testosterone alpha male Cybertruck driver feels about himself.
That’s where Mansory comes in. No more boring Ken doll-like smooth surfaces. No more basic beta minimalism. No more cheap crumbly plastic body cladding. Let’s give the Cybertruck some properly edgy carbon fiber trim. Let’s replace its dorky wheels with ’90s throwback deep dishes. Let’s get it a hood scoop! And two little wings! Mansory does all that while simultaneously gracing the Cybertruck with the best interior I’ve ever seen in a Tesla, mostly just by virtue of reupholstering it and giving it a splash of color.
They even gave it a proper name: Elongation. If that doesn’t make you feel better about yourself, I don’t know what would. The Mansory Cybertruck fully embraces everything about the Cybertruck, making it look like the cyberpunk culture warrior it always wanted to be
Take a look at the Mansory Elongation photos in the gallery and ask yourself objectively: does all the above make the Cybertruck worse looking, or is at the very least a net-neutral? I rest my case.
Kill It With Fire, Of Course
Jonny Lieberman: Seabaugh’s high, which is totally legal in California. Still, Mansory, long the most wanted automotive terrorist organization on the planet, has struck lead again. What most people fail to grok about the Cybertruck’s design is its Brutalist nature. It’s supposed to stand out, not only for the purity of its shape, but as a showcase for the material. What’s Mansory do? Cover up a quarter of the thing’s stainless steel with its signature chopped carbon fiber. Just awful. Imagine doing this to a Delorean. Blech. Conveniently, when viewed from the driver’s side, the weird arches taper into a large F, which is the grade I give this rolling nightmare.
And that’s from 50 feet away. The details are where the Elongation really sucks. Get in close, and it looks as if someone attacked the poor fenders with a pick axe. What are those triangular cutouts supposed to do? Remind you of a six-cylinder Buick? Mansory has long been the king of fake scoops, and here the brand’s working hard to retain that crown. Oh, air intakes for the pickup bed. How innovative. And are the other vents supposed to cool the rear tires? Just trash.
The 26-inch wheels are generic at best, and completely obscure the brake rotors to the point that it looks like the Delorean time machine from Back to the Future III, when Doc Brown had to stick it on wagon wheels. Last but not least let’s take a moment to laugh at the rear wings. Ha! How totally sad. No picture of it exists online, but those odd winglets like those are part of the reason Tom Gale decided to not go with Gandini’s design for the Countach replacement, and instead design the Diablo in Auburn Hills. Yuck for days. Finally, it’s bootlickingly called the Elongation and it’s not any longer. Just… no.
However…
This next part is still blowing my mind, but somehow, and it has to be on accident, Mansory managed to create not just the nicest interior it’s ever produced, but the nicest interior that’s ever been inside a Tesla. Instead of a dayglow, diamond pattern, crocodile-foreskin-leather nightmare, the Elongation features patterned, perforated leather that looks like fine fabric. Again, this is surely an compete and total accident, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Mansory will get back to its normal nonsense (I once saw a pink Bentley Continental that Mansory had assaulted/brought to Geneva that featured an orange, purple, and green interior) at the next possible opportunity. Mansory, never change. Just go away.