TLC Carrossiers, Inc. was founded in 1990 to produce a very special automobile, the Talbo. When the first Talbo was completed it was driven to Detroit for the 'Eye's on the Classics' show and received very complementary critical acclaim from many well known and respected automotive authorities. Strother McMinn stated that the Talbo was truly a work of art, fully representing the heritage of the classic French shapes. 'Mac', was honorary chief judge at the Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance for many years, an instructor at the Art Center in Automotive Design, and perhaps the most authoritative voice of classic design. With this encouragement, and the continued enthusiasm of Talbo owners and connoisseurs of design and craftsmanship, TLC Carrossiers has evolved. The roots of the company go back to the late 50's when company founder George Balaschak was customizing his personal cars and building a hot rod while earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. A career with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft developing rocket and jet engines and high energy lasers set the basis for working with high technology. Restoration of antique and classic cars and building of wooden and fiberglass boats helped set the stage for building the Talbo. We have in house capabilities in metal fabrication, welding, polishing, etc. We do composite tooling and parts fabrication at our site and painting in our down-draft booth. Building a low volume car requires a blending of technology and good old fashioned workmanship. Designing and building custom and show cars in a cost effective way today requires the use of a high portion of technology. With this in mind TLC Carrossiers began to use Computer Aided Design to discipline the laser cutting of chassis and trim parts for the Talbo. We have progressed to using high level 3-D CAD for our recent projects. The Mono show car body surfaces and most of the structure and chassis were designed using ProEngineer, a superb 3D CAD system. Another show car, the Rocket, seen at the Geneva International Auto Show in March of 1998, used both the CAD and CAM ProEngineer tools . TLC went straight from the computer design to the final car with no sub scale models as the schedule was very short for a project of this magnitude. Tool paths generated in ProN/C drove an MDSI OpenCNC controller on our large 5-axis gantry mill to carve out the molds for the one-off composite body. We then went on to capture the Talbo chassis in the CAD program to allow us to use this tool for future updates. George and Jacquie have now retired and building of the Talbo has been resumed by Gilles Chirignan at GC Carrossier. For more info.
