Boys will be boys - especially when it comes to car enthusiasm. Once they learn the makes and models, little boys often ask their parents to guess what car they've just spotted. They may dream of one day becoming professional racers - in addition to astronauts, of course.

Milen Ivanov did not become a car racer, but for 7 years he worked in a famous Bulgarian car tuning studio.Today cars are still part of his life, but only as digital projects. It's safe to say that his passion for automotive design has already paid off, as the all-terrain video game car he designed impressed the owners of a boutique automotive studio in Los Angeles, who decided to produce and market the model. Thus, the Rezvani Vengeance SUV was born.

"I never expected that my Jeep would generate so much interest that a company would want to produce it. When I designed it, my idea was to make it less futuristic so that people could still imagine that it was a real car," says Milen Ivanov in an interview with Radio Bulgaria. –I had to rework my original model as each of the projects had to fit into a certain price frame for the company to be within budget. The production cost of the first version I presented to them was about $1 million."

The price was too high, so the company had to reduce the value of its investment, which meant removing some of the SUV's features and extras. One of the changes had to do with the doors, which according to the original design were gullwing type.

"Opening an armoured door in this way requires completely different mechanisms and safety settings, because if such a door fell on a customer's foot, you can imagine what would happen: news headlines and a ruined reputation for both the company and the creator of this design. So the company has decided that it will sell the SUV at a lower and more affordable price without this extra. So the current lowest price is around 270,000 USD and can go up to 700,000 USD depending on the upgrades the customer wants to order. However, we have tried to keep 60% of the original design."

So far, three SUVs have been produced, and the company's goal is to produce 25 per year. The automobiles will be on display at the company's showroom in Los Angeles.

Despite being closely involved in the process of bringing the car to market, Millen hasn't been able to make it to Los Angeles yet, as he is fully committed to caring for his two children, who are too young to travel across the ocean.

In the meantime, his work also presents him with new challenges, this time related to animated series in which the main characters are cars.

"There are now 7 seasons with 7 series each. An animation studio is producing it under license to the official representatives of the Fast and Furious film series. I worked for 2 or 3 years on the design of the models used in the series" - reveals Milen and adds that the series is available on one of the global video platforms.

The project he is currently working on is still a secret. The only thing that can be said is that the story is again about cars, and the animation will be of a completely new type.

Born in Dobrich, Milen studied at the National School of Applied Arts ,,St. Luka", and then graduated from the National Academy of Arts. He admits that painting portraits, still-lifes and other pictures has always been boring to him, unlike the characters and plots in various feature films, cartoons and video games. He therefore chose to dedicate his career to this particular vocation, which he happily pursues to this day.

Photos: Personal archive

Translated and posted by Elizabeth Radkova