Meet the Dark Knight—a Brooding, Souped-up Tesla Model S
3 min
The US$104,990 three-motor 2023 Tesla Model S Plaid Edition is among the fastest cars in the world, able to reach 60 miles per hour in just two seconds. It puts out 1,020 horsepower and 1,050 pound-feet of torque.
The Plaid is so quick it leaves its drivers gasping for breath, but can the car be improved? Unplugged Performance, a tuning shop in Hawthorne, Calif., that launched in 2013, thinks it can. So was born the Dark Knight, a tweaked Model S-APEX Plaid that has been extensively reworked to better hug the pavement. It sells for approximately US$230,000, including the donor car. But the many options could make it costlier.
The powertrain stays the same, but the car gets a 19-piece carbon fibre wide body kit that allows it to wear big 21-inch, lightweight forged wheels. Airflow is improved with “bargeboard” bodywork in front of the front wheels, a technique adapted from Formula One. Also directing air is the company’s Autobahn front carbon-fibre diffuser. The car meets the world with a sinister satin-black finish, featuring more exposed carbon fibre.
The car’s centre of gravity is lowered via a kit, and there’s a three-way adjustable rear sway bar and a rear-mounted GT strut tower brace. Also part of the suspension build are a series of billet-aluminium adjustable control arms that cut weight, increase strength, and allow some fine adjustments. For those choosing optimum track performance, there are full-race coilover suspension choices available. The Dark Knight needs to stop, so there are carbon ceramic brakes all around, cooled via a ducting system.
The interior was designed in collaboration with von Holzhausen, a company created by Vicki von Holzhausen (married to Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen) that specialises in vegan leather products, including handbags. The tough-wearing interior fabric is in Serrano red and made from bamboo.
Unplugged Performance
Unplugged also makes over the other Teslas, including the S, 3, X, Y, and will also tweak the forthcoming Cybertruck. Brendan Sangerman, who directs marketing at Unplugged, says the Dark Knight is “the ultimate daily driver sports sedan.” Asked why the electric motors are left alone, he says, “You wouldn’t want it to be any faster than it is. Instead, we match the performance of the suspension and braking to the level of performance that the car already has.”
Sangerman emphasises that the Dark Knight is a bespoke product, and that the customer has a wide choice in the interior colors and fabrics. “We want customers to be very hands-on in the process,” he said. “If you tell us you like the interior shade in a specific Rolls-Royce, we can match it. Our parts catalog is pretty extensive.”
Unplugged is located close to the Tesla Design Center in Hawthorne. Its first Model S build was shown at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas in 2014, and the company exhibited at the Tokyo Auto Salon in 2016. Unplugged began putting its vehicles to the test on race tracks, and it set some EV records. It also won the exhibition class at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2021.
There will always be a market for performance tuners, and Unplugged has found a niche market in making some of the world’s most exciting EVs be just that little bit more intoxicating.
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The 1860s Darlinghurst mansion Stoneleigh could become Sydney’s most expensive home ever sold under the hammer when it goes to auction. Clint Ballard is giving buyers a $28 million guide for the heritage-listed mansion on Darley Street, opposite Iona, the former home of Hollywood royalty Baz Luhrmann. Stoneleigh is being offered for sale for the …
Set on one of the city’s last absolute riverfront sites, The Riversdale by Mosaic combines irreplaceable waterfront ownership with one of Brisbane’s most significant residential opportunities.
5 min
On Bastille Day, the scent of toasted bread, melting cheese, crêpes and velouté filled a heritage warehouse in Sydney’s Darlinghurst.
Inside Prim Haus, rooms had been transformed into an elegant interpretation of a contemporary French home. Cookware hung alongside market produce, appliances were placed within carefully composed domestic settings and live kitchens turned out French comfort food throughout the afternoon.
The occasion was La Maison de Tefal, an immersive celebration marking 70 years since a French engineer introduced an invention that would fundamentally change home cooking.
Tefal’s story began in 1956 with the commercial launch of what the company describes as the world’s first non-stick frying pan. Seven decades later, the business operates across cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care in more than 120 countries.
The scale of the modern brand is considerable, but its origins were remarkably domestic.
The invention that started in a French kitchen
In the early 1950s, French engineer Marc Grégoire began experimenting with polytetrafluoroethylene, better known as PTFE, after discovering its unusually effective non-stick properties.
The material was already known within industrial applications. Grégoire’s important contribution was developing a way to bond it securely to an aluminium disc.
According to the company’s history, a conversation with his wife inspired him to apply the process to cookware. The resulting pan allowed meat and eggs to be cooked using less fat, while making the surface considerably easier to clean.
Grégoire patented his non-stick frying-pan concept in 1954 and began selling the finished product in 1956. The new company’s name combined the French words for the two defining materials: Téflon and aluminium.
The attraction was immediate. This was innovation expressed through a simple, recognisable household problem. Food stuck to pans; the new Tefal pan was designed so it would not.
The idea quickly travelled beyond France. Tefal entered the United States in 1961, the same year the company established the production site at Rumilly, near the French Alps. Rumilly would become the centre of Tefal’s cookware expertise and develop an identity as the “frying pan capital of the world”.
The company says more than 35 million cookware items were manufactured at the Rumilly site in 2022. A local museum holds the 500 millionth pan produced by the factory, which came off the line in March 1994.
A Parisian home in the heart of Sydney
La Maison de Tefal translated that industrial history into a more intimate experience.
Held on 14 July, the anniversary used Bastille Day as both a cultural reference and a reminder that Tefal’s identity remains closely connected to French design and engineering.
Prim Haus was arranged as a sequence of domestic environments rather than a conventional product showroom. Guests moved through spaces devoted to cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care, with each collection presented within the rhythm of a modern home.
A French-market-inspired cooking area formed the social centre of the event. Live stations served croque-monsieur, crêpes and butternut velouté, demonstrating the products through food rather than static displays.
That distinction matters. Tefal’s most successful products have generally been those whose benefit can be understood almost immediately: a pan that releases food, a removable handle that saves cupboard space, an indicator showing when cookware has reached the correct temperature, or an appliance that automates part of a familiar cooking process.
Interactive demonstrations allowed guests to handle the products and see those functions in context. Heritage installations traced the brand’s development, while previews of newer releases connected its first frying pan with the much broader contemporary range.
The anniversary concluded with a champagne toast — an appropriately French punctuation mark for a company whose products have found their way into kitchens around the world.
Seventy years of practical invention
The non-stick frying pan established the operating principle Tefal continues to follow: find an everyday source of friction and develop a practical way to reduce it.
In 1996, the company introduced Ingenio, a modular cookware system built around removable handles. Pans could be stacked more efficiently and moved from cooktop to oven, table and refrigerator without the fixed handle of conventional cookware.
The concept anticipated the pressures that would reshape urban kitchens. As apartments became more compact and storage more valuable, cookware needed to occupy less room and serve more than one function.
Around the beginning of the following decade, Tefal introduced its heat-indicator technology, now known as Thermo-Signal. The circular marker changes appearance when the pan reaches its recommended cooking temperature, turning a technical question into a visual prompt.
In 2006, Tefal expanded the possibilities of countertop cooking with ActiFry. The appliance circulated hot air around food and used little or no added oil, helping establish a product category that would eventually become one of the most competitive areas of the global appliance market.
Innovation also moved beyond cooking. The Freemove cordless steam iron arrived in 2012, removing the cord from the active ironing movement while retaining a powered base.
The company’s current portfolio now extends across multicookers, grills, air fryers, blenders, ice-cream makers, garment steamers, irons and floor-care products. Although the categories are diverse, the common proposition remains convenience grounded in engineering.
The next generation of non-stick cookware
For its 70th year, Tefal has returned to the product that created the brand.
The new Excellence+ cookware range introduces what the company calls FusionCore technology. Tefal describes it as its most durable non-stick coating to date, designed to withstand intensive use and scratching.
As with any durability claim, consumers should follow the manufacturer’s care instructions and consider the applicable warranty rather than interpreting promotional language as a guarantee against every form of damage. But the focus on longer-lasting coatings reflects an important change in buyer expectations.
Convenience is no longer enough on its own. Modern households are increasingly concerned with how long products remain useful, whether they can be repaired and what happens when they reach the end of their working life.
Tefal has responded in several ways. Its Renew cookware uses recycled aluminium and a ceramic non-stick coating, while Groupe SEB has expanded cookware recycling initiatives in international markets. For many small domestic appliances, the group also promotes a 15-year repairability commitment based on parts availability and access to authorised repairers.
The details and warranty periods vary by product and country, so Australian buyers should check the conditions attached to an individual appliance. Nevertheless, repairability represents a meaningful shift from the assumption that a failed countertop appliance should simply be discarded.
From French manufacturer to global household group
Tefal joined Groupe SEB in 1968, giving the company greater international distribution and the resources to expand beyond cookware.
Founded in 1857 and headquartered in France, Groupe SEB has grown into a global small-appliance and cookware business with more than 30 brands. Its portfolio includes All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Lagostina and WMF, with operations extending across more than 150 countries.
Within that group, Tefal remains one of the flagship names — and one of the clearest examples of how a single invention can become the foundation for an international consumer brand.
Its longevity has not come from making everyday objects more complicated. The strongest Tefal products do the opposite. They take a small uncertainty, inconvenience or frustration and design it out of the task.
That was the value of Marc Grégoire’s original frying pan. It did not ask people to change what they cooked. It made the existing process easier, more predictable and less difficult to clean afterwards.
Seventy years later, that deceptively modest principle continues to guide the company.
La Maison de Tefal celebrated the products, the French heritage and the anniversary itself. Yet the larger story was visible at every cooking station and demonstration: innovation becomes lasting only when people can use it without having to think about the technology underneath.
For Tefal, the next 70 years will be shaped by new materials, smarter appliances, changing homes and greater expectations around durability. Its challenge will be to keep evolving without losing sight of the insight that started everything — that the most valuable household inventions often solve the most ordinary problems.
Tefal at a glance
- Founded: France, 1956
- Founder: Engineer Marc Grégoire
- Original innovation: Commercialisation of the first non-stick frying pan
- Manufacturing heritage: Rumilly, France
- Notable innovations: Ingenio, Thermo-Signal, ActiFry and Freemove
- Latest cookware development: Excellence+ with FusionCore technology
- Parent company: Groupe SEB
- International presence: More than 120 countries
- Australian website: Tefal Australia
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