Restomods Have Gone Too Far

I think I’ve come down with a new medical condition. It’s called acute restomod fatigue, and it’s been caused by the constant stream of reworkings, reimaginings, reinterpretations – whatever you want to call them – of classic cars that seem to be cropping up at a rate of several a week at the moment.

I like restomods. We all like old cars, more than ever as the new stuff gets heavier, more electrified, and more chock full of the kind of tech that removes us organic, fleshy beings from the act of driving.

Fundamentally, though, lots of old cars are actually quite rubbish to drive. They have brakes and suspension developed in an era when computers were things that filled entire buildings, and factors like wind direction and Jupiter’s position relative to Mercury will dictate whether they actually start up or not. And look, Apple CarPlay is really useful.

There are lots of restomods that address these things, without so much as giving a hint to onlookers that the car’s any different to the day it rolled out of the factory. Then there are some that subtly enhance the styling, turning a ’70s sports car into a roadgoing Group 4 racer or an old 4×4 into a laid-back beach cruiser. I like both of these approaches.

Lately, though, there’s been a noticeable shift. I’ve been noticing symptoms of my acute restomod fatigue for a few years now, as more and more companies have started taking classic cars and fundamentally restyling them with details that just look plain out of place, like swathes of bare carbon fibre and blinding LED ring lights.

At the risk of naming and shaming, the project that turned these mild symptoms into a full diagnosis is Touring Superleggera’s Veloce12. The Ferrari 550, as far as I’m concerned, is a near-perfect grand tourer, an exercise in restraint, fine detail and elegant proportions.

Touring’s modern interpretation of it… isn’t. I’m far from an expert, but I think it’s an overstyled mess. Still, I have little doubt the coachbuilder will have trouble finding buyers for the 30 550s – around one per cent of the amount ever produced – that are set to undergo this transformation.

The design cues of the 2020s don’t work well on cars from decades gone by. That doesn’t mean you can’t successfully transform an old design into a modern one – look at the current Alpine A110, Porsche 911, or the new Renault 5. They look like new cars that pay homage to classics. Lots of this new breed of restomods look like old cars that someone’s tried to awkwardly transpose modern design onto.

It speaks of something bigger at play in the high-end car market, too: a lack of imagination. I’m just as susceptible to nostalgia as the next sappy, rose-tinted glasses wearer, but if we allow it to take over completely, we’re going to drive out the kind of fresh, innovative thinking that led to these cars we love in the first place.

Granted, it’s a lot cheaper to start with a base car and modify it, but imagine the sort of things we’d end up with if a lot of these companies poured their considerable engineering talent into something new and unexpected, and not just Yet Another Air-Cooled 911 With A Widebody?

As I said, I like restomods. A lot. The subtle, well-executed ones are absolutely the best of both worlds, ironing out the quirks of classic ownership without stripping away the heart.

But the next time I see a classic ‘reinterpreted’ with garish LEDs, comically flared arches and enough carbon fibre to put an Airbus to shame – especially when it means slicing up an already perfectly nice old car – I think I might need someone to call an ambulance.