If you’ve been paying attention to my favourite poligono, Son Bugadelles, you will have seen the quality of the businesses there consistently improving. Now it’s going by the name of the “Mallorca Design District” and aiming at appealing to clients who love design, architecture and style, and the latest “nave” to open ticks all of those boxes, but for cars. Milesworks opened last weekend with a great gathering of some of the island’s most distinctive and recognisable cars, its founder Dominic Miles told us about the founding of the business and why he is still as driven to create and “make shapes” more than thirty years later.
For Dominic Miles, the love of cars began long before he could legally drive. The movie “Smokey and the Bandit” captured his attention, and at just seven years old, he experienced the first thrill of driving an automatic Mazda 323 on a private field. A lifelong passion was ignited. “I couldn’t wait to get on the road,” he recalls. “I spent 10 years watching the clock, counting down until I turned 17 and could finally get behind the wheel legally.”
By the age of 15, Dominic had saved enough to buy his first car: a Suzuki SJ410 Jeep. “I couldn’t even drive it on the road yet,” he laughs. “I’d roll it back and forth in the garage, dreaming about all the adventures I’d have with it.” Dominic didn’t stop at owning the Jeep—he began customising it almost immediately. “It was a white Jeep when I got it, but I painted it black and started swapping out parts to make it mine,” he explains. However, one key modification wasn’t his choice. “My mum was worried I’d roll it over,” he says. “So she sent it off to a garage to have a roll cage fitted. At first, I thought it would ruin the car’s look, but what they installed was this rally-spec roll cage that made it look incredible. It completely transformed the car.”
This early project sparked Dominic’s urge to create. “It wasn’t just about making the car look good—it was about the challenge of creating something unique. I didn’t have the skills, but that didn’t stop me. I decided I’d figure it out as I went along. It was long before any “How To” shows on YouTube so I had to learn from whoever could teach me, and make plenty of mistakes along the way!”
Custom Car Culture
Born and raised in Mansfield Woodhouse, Dominic grew up surrounded by a unique local customised car culture. “No one would be impressed if you pulled up in a Ferrari,” he says. “But show up in a van with a Ferrari engine installed, and suddenly, you would have everyone’s attention. It’s about how creative you can be, not how much money you have.”
A talented artist, Dominic initially pursued a course in graphic design at college. But the transition from traditional design methods to computers left him feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. “The industry was changing so fast, and halfway through the course, everything we were learning was becoming obsolete. I realised I’d invested three years into something that wasn’t going to help me get a job.” An outspoken streak had him clashing with authority. “I had a teacher who didn’t like me because I thought differently,” Dominic recalls. “He said my work didn’t look like I’d put hours into it,” Dominic recalls. “But I had. I’d thought it through—I just didn’t take the conventional route.” His frustration with the teacher’s lack of real-world experience boiled over, and Dominic ultimately decided to leave the course. “I realised I wanted to do things my way, with my own hands, and make something real.”
After walking out of college in frustration, Dominic turned to working with his hands. From making headrests in a factory to repairing cars on the road, Dominic took on a variety of jobs, each one adding to his skill set. “I learned to sew headrests, work with fibre glass, and as a mobile painter, filling in tiny stone chips on car bonnets,” he says. “Every job taught me something new.”
The Birth of Pinky and Kingdom Developments
Outside of his work life, Dominic poured hundreds of hours into a car that was to become a legend in the UK car scene: a Vauxhall Nova lovingly dubbed “Pinky.” With a bold pink paint job, custom front bumper and personalised licence plate, “P1NK1”, the car became much more than a vehicle—it was an expression of Dominic’s creativity and personality. “Pinky didn’t look like the mean cars which people were creating, you know, muscle cars? Pinky was cheeky, a little outrageous, but still serious under the bonnet where it counted.” The Nova’s unique modifications caught the eye of a local customiser and he passed on Dom’s name and number to a national car magazine, which asked to feature it in a photoshoot. With the encouragement of his friends, Dominic added a playful sticker to the car’s windscreen that read Kingdom (King Dom, get it?) Developments. But what started as a joke turned into an unexpected opportunity. “When the magazine came out with our house landline number printed in it, the phone didn’t stop ringing,” he recalls. “People kept asking how much my body kits were. I didn’t even have a price—I just made something up to stop them calling! I said £200, and suddenly, I had orders coming in. On the first day I made £1000!” The accidental business took off rapidly, earning him a substantial income far beyond his mobile painter employment which he had to resign from to keep up with the orders. .
In a matter of weeks, Dominic’s garage-based project snowballed into a thriving business. “Pinky became famous,” Dominic says. “It was my entry ticket into a world I’d only ever dreamed of.”
“You’re Worth What You Can Build”
Kingdom Developments thrived in its prime, producing custom body kits that became highly sought after. “We were making £40,000 a month,” Dominic says. His work was featured in over 40 issues of Max Power magazine, including seven front covers—a source of great pride for him.
Throughout his career Dominic has remained steadfast in his belief that the value of building far outweighs that of buying. “Anyone can go and buy a Lamborghini,” he says. “That’s not interesting to me. What’s impressive is what you can make or build with your own hands.” He describes the car culture in his hometown of Mansfield as one where ingenuity and creativity were prized above all. “No one cared about how much money you had. It was about what you could build. If you showed up with a car you’d modified yourself, that’s what earned respect.”
Pinky’s Legacy and Lessons Learned
But as demand for fibreglass kits surged, cheap imports from China flooded the market. The influx of poorly made products damaged the industry’s reputation. Coupled with personal struggles, including the loss of his father and a divorce, Dominic made the difficult decision to close Kingdom Developments.
“I lost everything,” he admits. “It was devastating, but it taught me a lot about resilience and focusing on what matters most.” Dominic was forced to sell Pinky during this difficult period in his life. Years later, Dominic has been astonished to learn that Pinky had survived. The owner, unable to drive the car due to work commitments, had kept it stored in a garage for over two decades. “When I found out Pinky was still out there, it was surreal,” he says. “It felt like a part of my past had come back to remind me of where I started.”
Although Dominic has chosen not to try to reclaim Pinky, he remains deeply connected to the car’s legacy. “Pinky taught me that what you build matters,” he says. “It wasn’t about how much the car was worth—it was about the time, effort, and creativity I poured into it. That’s what gave it value.”
Despite the end of Kingdom Developments, Dominic’s creative spirit endured. Moving to Mallorca and assisting with Son Amar, the family business, and opening SoCial club in Palma, gave him a fresh start, but his passion for creating customised cars remained. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he transformed a Porsche Boxster in a custom project in his garage. “That car became a therapy,” he says. “It reminded me why I fell in love with this work in the first place.”
COVID, and new beginnings
By September 2020, the garage project was complete, and the decision to launch Miles Works Automotive had been made. It started off small, as a sideline whilst Dom was busy with SoCial but now has become a full time global operation with his own factory in Poland (where his partner Eva is from) making the custom parts which he has designed that are then shipped across Europe and the United States. His Porsche Boxster body kits, crafted with meticulous attention to detail, reflect his dedication to pushing boundaries. “ It’s about doing something new, something that challenges and excites me.”
Now Dominic has opened a state-of-the-art facility in Son Bugadelles in Calvia, Mallorca, complete with a tyre shop, paint studio, and prototyping area. “But it’s not just about running a business for me,” he says. “It’s about creating a space for innovation. I have a very small team and we are all passionate and love what we do. We have paid attention to every detail in the garage, anyone with a low rise car will appreciate what we have done. So many sports cars cannot cope with kerbs and we have lifts which the cars can literally drive onto without any risk of damaging the underside of the car. We have special machinery to remove the tyres from your car without damaging the wheels, and we will not charge you a fortune for it either.”
Dominic wants to remain hands-on in the workshop, “That’s where I belong. Working with fibreglass is like sculpting,” Dominic says. “You’re problem-solving, finding ways to turn an idea into reality. It’s incredibly satisfying. It’s what you build that matters,” he says, summing up. “That’s where the value lies — in what you create.” You can contact Dominic and his team at www.tyreworks.es or call (0034) 971 134 131 for more information.
