The Tedson Etna's cabin is a war on touchscreens, fought with an open-gate manual
The most radical thing about this 10,000 rpm supercar might be its gear lever
Almost every new performance car answers the same way now: another giant touchscreen, another layer of menus between you and the machine. Croatian coachbuilder Tedson Motors has just shown the inside of its Lamborghini Gallardo restomod, the Etna, and it goes hard in the opposite direction. This is a cabin built around an open-gate manual, aircraft toggle switches and machined metal, with digital technology allowed in only where it genuinely earns its keep.
Analog where it counts, digital where it helps
Tedson describes the philosophy bluntly: every physical driver interaction stays visceral, mechanical and tactile, while screens are reserved purely for things they actually improve, drivability, telemetry and connectivity. So the centrepiece display is a MoTeC motorsport unit sitting directly in your sightline for vitals and track data, and modern conveniences like Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and a bespoke audiophile sound system are woven in, rather than allowed to take over. It is the opposite of the all-screen approach the rest of the industry keeps defaulting to.
The details that matter
The star is the open-gated manual shifter, anchored in a continuous matte carbon-fibre centre spine that runs the length of the cabin, the sort of mechanical theatre most brands abandoned a decade ago. Around it sit weighted billet toggle switches and a rotary command dial in place of cluttered plastic buttons, plus CNC-machined aluminium turbine air vents that replace the brittle factory louvres. The driver faces a squared motorsport wheel with a flat top and bottom, trimmed in Nappa leather, Alcantara and carbon, while low-profile carbon sport seats drop the driving position and add headroom, finished with bespoke woven leather inserts. Every one of the 77 cars is individually tailored in a mix of Nappa, carbon, ceramic-coated metals and Alcantara.
The car underneath
The cabin sits inside a serious machine. The Etna takes a first-generation Gallardo and rebuilds it around a 5.0-litre naturally aspirated V10 pushed past 600 hp and spinning beyond 10,000 rpm, breathing through a custom titanium exhaust tuned for a Formula 1 note. A full carbon body and lightweight parts strip around 200 kg out of the car, the track grows by 6 cm at each axle, and JRZ supplies bespoke suspension. Crucially for the purists, Tedson's core mission is converting the Gallardo's old E-Gear automated manual to a proper three-pedal gated shift. Prices start at around 720,000 euros, or 625,000 pounds, before you even supply the donor car, with just 77 to be built, the first nine Launch Edition cars due in the autumn of 2026 and each commission taking about a year to complete. Croatia, quietly, has produced one of the most interesting restomods of the year.
AutoNext Take
There is a real argument buried in this interior, and it is one we happen to agree with. A supercar is supposed to involve you, and the slow creep of touchscreens into everything has been quietly draining that involvement away, swapping switches you can find blind for menus you have to look down and hunt through. Tedson drawing a hard line, mechanical for the driver, digital only where it truly helps, is exactly the discipline the wider industry has lost.
Whether it is worth three-quarters of a million euros on top of a donor Gallardo is a separate question, and one only 77 very lucky people will get to answer. But even if you will never sit in one, the Etna's cabin is a useful provocation. It proves you can have CarPlay, real telemetry and a screaming 10,000 rpm V10 without burying the joy under glass. More of this, please.
