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Mirror Magazine

A passion for designing cars
By Chamintha Thilakarathna
Seventeen-year-old Sumesh Fernando is an ordinary teen with an extraordinary hobby. When other guys in the neighbourhood are playing cricket or simply hanging out, Sumesh can be found poring over an automobile catalogue or designing a car.
When the Mirror Magazine met Sumesh last week in the midst of his London A/L exams, he wasn't grappling with maths equations. "Compared to doing math homework, designing cars is much more fun," he smiled.

Often referred to as 'car freak' by his friends, Sumesh is 'crazy' about cars in more ways than one would imagine. In fact, he wanted his e-mail address to be 'car_freak' but since it was not available, he sadly informed us that he had to settle for 'car_luniac@yahoo.com.'

Sumesh's bookshelf is piled with automobile catalogues, magazines, and manuals and his walls decorated with automobile posters. On his desk one is more likely to find drawings for cars and his original designs of vehicles. Even the calendar and the table clock have pictures of cars.

"I have every recent car catalogue available in Sri Lanka including the Benz catalogues from 1973, Mitsubishi from 1993 and Nissan up-to-date as well," said the proud youngster.

How does he get them? " I find them in book stores, on pavement book stands and my friends and relatives also provide me with books, magazines and catalogues," he said. His birthday gifts include CDs on automobile manuals and assembling information, books and posters of latest designs, T-shirts with cars on them etc. In short, it is almost impossible to imagine that Sumesh has a life beyond cars, although he says that he does enjoy a bit of basketball and computing.

Sumesh has also been drawing and designing cars since he was about ten years old. "I have drawn about 300 cars and about half of them are original designs. Some are modifications of existing vehicles with different accessories and other features," Sumesh explained.

A student of mechanics, his ambition is to be a professional automobile designer. "My favourite vehicle is the Mercedes Benz but I do enjoy designing and modifying other vehicles also."

Designing a car takes about six hours and additional touches and adjustments come in later. 'Daihatsu Megaspace' and 'V12' are some of his original designs. "Designing automobiles is my life. When I start designing a car, I don't have a specific theme that I go by. I start with the buffer and lights and design it accordingly adding and subtracting accessories and features. Although I give a fairly good description of the exterior, it is difficult to design the interior of the car as it involves more features," he explains.

This car buff also has trucks, buses, jeeps, motorcycles and racing cars on the drawing board. At the moment, he is looking out for opportunities to further his dream and ambition of becoming a professional automobile designer, once he completes his A/Ls.
" I can't imagine myself doing anything but this," he says.

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