RestoMods are becoming a lot more popular these days and we couldn’t be happier about it. If you’re not familiar, RestoMods are a perfect combination of restoring and modifying a vehicle. Restoring a vehicle means that you are trying to get the car as close to what it was when it came off the factory line, perfectionists even try to use the same bolts and matching OE part numbers. Most times if you are trying to get the most money restoring a vehicle, this is the way to go. Now on the other hand, modifiers I guess we can call them, prefer to make their vehicles as far from stock as possible and there are unlimited aftermarket products to help make that possible.
Lets say you love the ’67-’69 Camaro but you want a car that handles better then a cement truck and has the modern comforts that we have all grown accustom to. Enter the RestoMod. The idea being that you take the look and curb appeal of an old muscle car combined with the chassis and drivetrain from a modern Camaro and marry the two together using some good old fashion human ingenuity. I mean lets be honest, as cool and mean as the old school muscle cars sound, and even though they had monster engines up to 454-455 cubic inches, they were all kind of slow. At least by today’s standards. For example, the 2015 Honda Civic SI has a 2.4L (145 cubic inch) Inline 4 cylinder engine with 205 hp that can do 0-60 in 6.5 seconds, the 1969 Camaro SS 396 had 6.5L (396 cubic inch) V8 pushing out 375hp has a 0-60 time of 6.8 seconds. How many of you would’ve guessed that a tiny little juice box of a car like the Civic in stock form could beat the almighty 69′ Camaro in a 0-60 sprint? If they decided to drag race a full quarter mile it would literally be a coin flip to see who would win because they have very similar times at around 15 seconds. In comparison the 2016 Camaro SS comes with a 6.2L (378 cubic inch) V8 pushing out 455Hp with a 0-60 time just under 4 seconds and a 1/4 mile time of 12.3 seconds.
Another popular form of RestoMods is to take old pickup trucks and upgrade the chassis with long travel suspension from the likes of a Ford Raptor or even better, a trophy truck, and slap a modern day drivetrain in there. Then they add a few safety measures like roll cages and 5 point racing harness and race them out in the desert or take them to the sand dunes and do some jumping. Occasionally you’ll see a truck that has been RestoModed to run on the street used for drag racing, or just to have the baddest street truck on the block.
Here is a Beautiful example of a Restomod on steroids. This Gun Metal Grey Charger has around 1650hp but still looks like its a fairly stock vehicle, just much better.
Here is an example off an off road restomod.
These RestoMods are starting to make a lot more sense, aren’t they. All of the modern day comforts, reliability and performance while keeping the curb appeal of the vintage vehicles. Hell yeah, sign me up!