What happened to DC Design, and why is it now called DC2?

Dilip Chhabria built DC Design into the most famous car modification and design house in India, then lost control of it after his arrest in December 2020 in a fraud case tied to the DC Avanti, the sports car he had spent two decades trying to put on Indian roads. He was granted bail four months later. Since 2025 he has returned under a new name, DC2, showing electric SUVs and luxury motorhomes rather than selling production road cars.

From a Gypsy redesign to India's best known customiser

Chhabria trained at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, worked briefly at General Motors in the United States, then came home. His first paying job was a ring shaped horn for the Premier Padmini. His real break was personal. In 1992 he redesigned his own Maruti Gypsy, and the reworked Gypsy drew enough attention on Mumbai's roads that he set up a workshop in Marol, Mumbai, in 1993 and called it DC Design. Over the next two decades the company built one off cars for film stars and business families, and even an Aston Martin V8 Vantage show car prototype shown at the 2003 Detroit Motor Show. DC Design is credited with more than 600 vehicle designs and grew to around 300 employees at its peak, working on everything from a scooter for Kinetic to luxury buses and vanity vans for logistics and film clients.

The DC Avanti, and the fraud case that ended it

Chhabria's biggest ambition was the DC Avanti, pitched as India's first homegrown sports car, unveiled at the 2012 Auto Expo in New Delhi and finally put on sale in 2015. It used a 2.0 litre turbo petrol engine making 250 bhp, with a 310 bhp limited edition version built in just 31 units. Across its entire run from 2012 to 2020, only 127 Avantis were ever sold in India and abroad.

The company's end came from how those cars were financed, not how they drove. Mumbai Police found that Dilip Chhabria Designs Pvt Ltd had used around 90 Avanti cars to raise about ₹42 lakh per vehicle in fraudulent loans from non banking finance companies, registering the same cars at two or three different RTOs in different states to take out multiple loans against them. Chhabria was arrested on 29 December 2020 on cheating and forgery charges. Comedian Kapil Sharma filed a separate FIR against him on 7 January 2021 over an unfulfilled vanity van order. Chhabria spent close to four months in custody before Mumbai's Esplanade Magistrate Court granted him bail on 3 April 2021, on a personal bond, and told him not to leave the country without the court's permission.

What DC2 builds now

DC2 reappeared in public at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo in January 2025, working with a partner called Mercury EV Tech rather than running its own car factory. Its showpiece, the DC2 eTanq, is an electric SUV concept with a 180 kWh battery claimed to produce 650 bhp, built on a reported development budget of ₹18 crore. Alongside it, DC2 showed a reworked Toyota Vellfire called the Quad Luxe, a family vehicle called the Empyrean, a small commuter called the Lex Lounge, a rickshaw reinterpretation called the e Rover, and the Europa, a mobile showroom built on a Mercedes G Wagon with partner Goldmedal Electricals.

None of this is a production car you can book at a DC2 showroom today. For an Indian enthusiast, the lesson from DC Design's rise and fall sits alongside any modern body kit or restomod order from any shop on this beat. Get a clear written delivery date and invoice before paying a customisation house a large advance, and keep the RC and RTO paperwork for any one off build in your own name from day one.

Sources

• Dilip Chhabria, Wikipedia
• DC Avanti, Wikipedia
• Dilip Chhabria granted bail in Avanti Scam Case, Lawstreet
• DC Returns with DC2 e-Tanq and other models at Auto Expo 2025, Motorbeam
• How Dilip Chhabria became India's top car designer, Motoroids