Top 10 Custom Cars of the 2014 Geneva Motor Show

The Geneva Motor Show is most commonly associated with high-end sports car debuts. This year, stunners like the Lamborghini Huracan, Ferrari California T and McLaren 650S all made their global debuts.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Cars of the 2014 Geneva Motor Show

Rare as those cars are, there’s something even more unusual on display. After their initial debuts, those supercars disperse to owners and, inevitably, tuning shops. Sometimes the results are admirable, sometimes they’re awful.

Mercedes-Benz is moving to a more homogenous style with its new products. The CLA looks like a downsized CLS while the C-Class shares much of its styling with the more expensive E- and S-Class sedans. That might be a boon for buyers on the low end, but people springing for the six-figure full-size flagship might wind up feeling jilted when they realize that there isn’t quite as much to distinguish their car from other than cost half as much.

There are plenty of ways to solve that problem and for Carlsson, the answer is golden. They are showcasing the CS50 Versailles in Geneva: an S-Class partially covered in gold leafing. That application continues in the interior. The company plans to build 25 copies of the car, which is being aimed at customers in China.

It isn’t hard to find modified Aventadors at the Geneva Motor Show this year. Mansory, Mamann and Nimrod all brought their own spin in the Italian supercar. If owning the same exotic ride as Bruce Wayne isn’t enough for you, German tuner Hamann has an option you might be interested in. Its Aventador “Limited” is dressed in a matte black finish accented by florescent green mesh, pin striping on the wheels and inserts in the cabin. It also gets a mild bump to 760 hp and 542 lb-ft of torque through an ECU tweak.

One of the biggest drawbacks – or advantages depending on how you look at it – to Porsche’s 911 Turbo models is that they are sold exclusively with all-wheel drive. It makes them viable for a greater mix of road conditions and renders their potent powerplants more manageable.

If that isn’t important to you, the Ruf RCT might be a product worth looking at. The Porsche tuner is displaying its potent Porsche in Geneva with 525 hp, 502 lb-ft of torque and – you guessed it – power to the rear wheels. That makes it a little bit more powerful than a stock Porsche 911 but less powerful than the Turbo S. The tuning house will also sell you an all-wheel drive version of the car, but the biggest draw here is probably the availability of rear-wheel drive.

Normally, a Lamborghini Aventador stands on its own as a symbol of wealth. In fact, that’s a reasonable rule of thumb for any of the cars that Mansory touches, but “normal” and “reasonable” are at least two words that don’t exist in the high-end German mod shop’s vocabulary.

But be honest with yourself for a second; would you really care about anything like that if owning a 1,600-hp Aventador was a real possibility? Didn’t think so. The Mansory Carbonado GT is exactly that. A pair of turbochargers fitted to the 6.5-liter V12 engine boost it to the aforementioned insane output level. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Mansory-tuned product without a body re-made almost entirely from carbon fiber.