When Engineering Becomes Art: How Andrii Lutskan Solves Challenges Beyond the Reach of 80% of Specialists

How Andrii Lutskan built a mobile automotive electronics lab in Los Angeles—one impossible problem at a time.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

When Andrii Lutskan arrived in Los Angeles, he had no investors, no office, no team. He had an old laptop, tools shipped from Ukraine, and fifteen years of rare expertise in automotive control systems.

Within a year, his converted bus became a mobile lab serving shops across Los Angeles and Orange County—not for routine repairs, but for the cases that had stumped everyone else.

Today, Limard USA represents something rare in the American automotive aftermarket: a one-man research lab on wheels, solving problems that official dealerships can’t touch.

The Problems No One Else Solves

A European sedan sits in a California shop with a mysterious electrical fault. The diagnostic scanner throws cryptic errors. The dealership manual offers no solution. The car is undriveable.

For most specialists, this is where the trail ends. For Lutskan, it’s where the real work begins.

“We don’t just flash control units,” he explains from his mobile lab, surrounded by equipment that reads raw processor memory. “We work with the architecture of the vehicle itself—directly with processors and internal memory, regardless of system type or brand.”

Using professional-grade tools like Autel Ultra, WinOLS, MagicFlex, Kess, K-Tag, and Xentry, Lutskan can extract corrupted data from a control module, reconstruct the necessary code, and write it back—without replacing a single physical component. It’s automotive electronics as forensic science.

The Ukrainian Foundation

The story begins long before Los Angeles. In 2007, when Lutskan was seventeen, he was already teaching himself the language of ECUs. By nineteen, he’d rented his first garage in Odessa—a cramped space that became both classroom and laboratory.

“I’ve spent my entire life doing only this,” Lutskan says. For more than fifteen years: just automotive electronics, diagnostics, programming, tuning.

By 2017, that obsession had produced a reputation substantial enough to formalize. Lutskan registered the Limard brand in Ukraine and opened his first service center. Within months, even official dealerships began referring their most stubborn cases to him. By 2019, Limard had expanded to two locations, specializing in European automotive electronics—the notoriously complex systems from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen Group.

Ukraine’s position in the global automotive aftermarket helped shape this expertise. With limited access to official dealer networks and proprietary tools, Ukrainian specialists developed workarounds that often surpass factory capabilities. Limard represented the apex of this ecosystem—investing in equipment most independent shops globally can’t justify.

Then came February 2022, and everything changed.

Starting Over in America

After the war began, Lutskan made the decision to relocate part of his operation overseas. Arriving in Los Angeles meant starting from scratch: no reputation, no client base, no infrastructure.

The concept was bold: a mobile lab performing diagnostics, programming, and calibration on-site. Converting a bus into a full-service engineering station, Lutskan equipped it with the same processor-level tools that had made Limard legendary in Eastern Europe.

The American market responded quickly. Within months, Southern California auto shops discovered what Ukrainian dealerships had learned years earlier: when a European vehicle’s electronics fail in ways that conventional diagnostics can’t explain, Lutskan can usually fix it.

His client base now includes shops handling everything from mysterious electrical gremlins to vehicles whose original modules are no longer manufactured.

“Speed, precision, and independence from dealer solutions,” Lutskan explains when asked about his competitive advantage. “Many official service centers contact us when they can’t solve complex electronic problems.”

When Engineering Crosses Into Art

What distinguishes Lutskan from typical high-skill technicians is his commitment to formalizing knowledge. He’s authored an academic paper examining how modern vehicle control units can be designed—or retrofitted—to handle increasing complexity without sacrificing reliability.

He’s also written L.I.M.A.R.D – Innovative Solutions in Automotive Electronics: 10 Steps to a Systematic Approach, a methodological guide that teaches a way of thinking about vehicle electronics as integrated systems rather than isolated components.

This intellectual infrastructure transforms Limard from a service business into something closer to a research lab. It’s why Lutskan’s work includes not just repair, but component protection removal, module synchronization, and deep programmatic intervention that most specialists can’t attempt.

“A car isn’t just an object—it’s an ecosystem,” he explains. “If you understand its architecture, you can bring back to life what others have already written off.”

Beyond the Wrench: Limard School

Drawing on his previous teaching experience at Odessa Polytechnic, Lutskan launched Limard School—an educational platform where specialists worldwide study modern coding and automotive electronics technologies.

The curriculum combines theory and practice: from diagnostic fundamentals to chip tuning, EEPROM work, and ADAS calibrations. The emphasis isn’t on simple reflashing, but on understanding engineering processes.

The first online courses targeting the American market are in development. Lutskan’s vision: a community of engineers who think systematically rather than procedurally, who understand why systems behave as they do, not just how to follow repair protocols.

The Drifter Engineer

Then there’s the other side of Lutskan: the one who competes in professional drift racing. His vehicles—a 550-horsepower Lexus GS430 “LolaDrift” and a BMW E30 “Betty”—have competed in drift series across Ukraine and Europe, consistently reaching top-8 and top-16 finishes.

But these cars serve a dual purpose. They’re testing grounds. Every tuning solution, every ECU modification gets validated on track before being applied to client vehicles. It’s quality control at 100 mph, sideways.

This intersection of motorsport and engineering also built community. Around Limard, enthusiasts gathered who understood that the guy tuning their ECU for the track was competing alongside them on weekends.

When Knowledge Becomes Intuition

There’s a particular kind of expertise that develops when someone spends fifteen years doing nothing but one thing. Solutions emerge not from consulting manuals but from an intuitive grasp of how systems behave.

This is where engineering crosses into art—where technical precision meets creative problem-solving. Where someone like Andrii Lutskan can look at a diagnostic report that means nothing to most specialists and immediately understand not just what’s wrong, but why it’s wrong and how to fix it.

The seventeen-year-old in that first Odessa garage couldn’t have predicted where his obsession would lead—from Ukraine to professional racing to a mobile laboratory serving Southern California. But he understood, even then, that modern cars were computers on wheels, and mastering them would require thinking like both a mechanic and a software engineer.

In 2022, he received the title “Leader of Ukrainian Entrepreneurship” for contributions to innovation in diagnostics, programming, and tuning. The following year brought the “Quality Mark” award for Innovation and Professionalism in Modern Auto Technologies.

But perhaps the truest validation comes from the calls he receives daily—from shops across Southern California facing problems that conventional wisdom says can’t be solved.

The Mission

Today, Limard USA operates as a full-service mobile engineering laboratory. Plans include launching an offline school in California, creating a physical space where American technicians can learn the systematic approach that made Limard successful across two continents.

Lutskan’s goal extends beyond building a business. He aims to unite engineers globally around precision, innovation, and respect for technology—to show that in an increasingly standardized industry, there’s still room for genuine expertise.

“I always say: we don’t just reprogram modules—we create solutions that make the car smarter and the driver more confident,” Lutskan reflects. “Limard is engineering, tested by the road.”

From a cramped garage in Odessa to a mobile lab in Los Angeles, Lutskan proves that true engineering is borderless—a universal language spoken in the logic of microchips.