In a quiet back street in East Queanbeyan, a small group of car nuts are quietly chasing their dreams in a world-class, no-fuss manner.
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And as testimony to the quality of their work, their order book is full for years to come.
The Real Steel Group had been hiding its astonishing depth of high-end car-building capability for years until this year's Summernats when one of its local clients, Livi Krevatin, held high the grand champion sword to celebrate the best car at the nation's biggest car show.
For the tiny team at Real Steel which spent years building the Nats-winning car - a 1978 Porsche 911 sports car - it was the culmination of a fiercely intensive project, driven by a client whose fastidious attention to detail even exceeded those on the tools.
Even more remarkable was that a vehicle lauded by the judges for its millimetre-framed detail - essentially by taking the source vehicle apart piece by piece and both rebuilding and refashioning it to standards exceeding those of the world's most exclusive car makers - was crafted over years in relative secret.
Until now.
"We don't like to make a big deal about what we do," Real Steel's chief executive Steve Mommsen said.
"But I guess the secret's well and truly out now."
The much-coveted Summernats grand champion prize for Real Steel came after the Queanbeyan company's car finished in first place at Motorex, the Melbourne show where judging standards are at a similar level of razor-sharp focus.
The company had built a succession of elite one-off cars at its Queanbeyan auto body shop since 2014 but such extraordinary recent success at the two biggest car shows in Australia reaffirmed Steve Mommsen's decision in late 2022 to commit even more completely to the niche, high-end of the car reformation and restoration business.
"Late last year we decided that what we wanted was to build the really special super-cool cars... the dream cars.
"So we decided to chase that dream."
To those who have less of an understanding about this type of automotive work, Real Steel's goal is to produce combustion-engined works of art.
The joy in what they achieve - and appreciated by those clients with pockets deep enough to afford it - is that for all that exquisite detail, there's no need to be delicate in handling the end product. Should owners choose to do so, the Real Steel cars are always built and engineered to be driven with gusto, as the Krevatin Porsche proved when it roared through the driving events to secure grand champion.
Real Steel is a high-end machining shop as much as an elite vehicle restoration operation.
Out front are 12 computerised numerical control multiple axis lathes, milling and each turning out different types of highly sophisticated items, from rebuilt and re-bored Subaru engine blocks to high security, twin-keyed door locks and machine gun mounts.
As this hums away at the front of the building, down the back in the body shop, mechanic-fabricator Jimmy Trapp and expert painter David "Naz" Narik make the magic happen.
"The front end of the business, the precision milling and machining, creates the throughput of work that makes the body shop dream viable and at the same time gives us the tools we need to build the one-off parts for our car projects," Mr Mommsen said.
The aluminium rear spoiler on the Krevatin Porsche, for example, started as a raw 80kg billet of alloy. Hundreds of machining hours later, it was honed down to a precisely-sculpted 2.5kg component.
The most ephemeral of Real Steel's elite car dreams is still in its infancy.
The skeletal body of a 1961 Type 1 VW Kombi is a project the team hopes in three years to take to the world's most prestigious car show, Autorama, in Detroit. No car from Australia has ever won the Ridler, awarded to the best of the very best.
"We all have to dream, don't we? That's our dream," Steve Mommsen said.
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