Hi, I'm Łukasz, the founder and owner of Simline. I want to share with you a greatly condensed story of the company that started as a hobby and evolved into a small, friendly business selling its products worldwide.
The passion for sim racing began around the year 2000 when I first experienced force feedback (FFB). Quickly hooked, I began competing in leagues based on solid platforms like rFactor and later Assetto Corsa. When AC entered the Early Access phase, I decided to organize the first Polish sim racing league based on this platform. We moved our initiative from one portal to another until, along with Rafał, Kris, Bart, and a few others, we decided to base everything on the forum that many Polish sim racers know well: Simrace.pl. The website is still active today, although most conversations have shifted to Discord. Nevertheless, the forum remains lively and has expanded to include additional leagues, which brings joy due to my contribution. It was through the forum that a friend asked me to build a steering wheel for him for his trusty OSW (Open Sim Wheel).
I don't know if it's exactly the same one I made back then, but it's one of the first. Those were the times when steering wheels of this type were not available on the market at all.
Of course, looking back, I'm not proud of that steering wheel. Today, I would make it completely differently, but everyone starts somewhere.
The Simline brand actually started around 2015 when I decided to quit my previous job and focus solely on electronics. The business plan was simple: design and program smart homes, automate farms, and produce sim racing gadgets. However, the business plan was flawed. I never made a smart home in my life. From the very beginning, 100% of my time was consumed by sim racing. I'm very happy about that.
The Open Wheel steering wheel project, which my friend Przemek and I designed together, quickly became outdated. The market standard was changing rapidly. 3D printing was losing its appeal due to people buying low-quality printers and printing models with the cheapest and worst filament, not designed according to the art of technology. At the same time, GT3 series were beginning to dominate sim racing leagues. This is where our adventure with replicas began, and the first one from my hands was the Porsche GT3 Cup.
Even though nearly 10 years have passed, they still have devoted fans, and we continue to produce them, albeit with significant changes. However, the overall shape and technologies have remained unchanged.
Thanks to these projects, we were able to develop and handle various non-standard orders, such as the SF90h.
The GT3 Cup and R were closed-wheel steering wheels. Naturally, I wanted to create open GT3 steering wheels. At that time, the most popular ones were Audi and Huracan, but I also decided to design a Corvette C7.R steering wheel. I don't quite remember why, but it seems to me that they weren't available on the market, and everyone likes to have something unique.
Small-scale production, unfortunately, isn't very easy. It's hard to find the right subcontractor, so almost all the funds were allocated to expanding my workshop, acquiring new tools, and my first CNC machines in life. Interestingly, my first CNC milling machine is still in our workshop today, although it's rarely used anymore.
English 
Polski
Comments (0)