I imagine the idea of a resto-mod appeals to a lot of petrol heads. The thought being having classic car looks, with modern convenience, performance and driveability. Unfortunately, generally speaking, resto-mod cars get a bad reputation. Not because they are a bad idea, but simply because most are badly executed. As anyone who has ever attempted building one will tell you, a resto-mod is actually far more work than a normal restoration.
It sounds simple, take a classic car, shove a modern drivetrain and aircon into it. Done! Right? No. Modern engines with all their ancillaries tend to be much bigger than old lumps. Even if you can get it to fit, you now need a management system to run it all. Installing power steering? You’re going to need a new steering rack then, and best make sure it works with the suspension.
Presumably you’ll be upgrading the suspension too so make sure it all fits in the bodywork and around that big new shiny engine. For your new aircon you’ll need new vents, ducting, controls – possibly easier to just replace the whole dash. Speaking of instrumentation, your old gauges are useless now, so you’ll need something that can talk to your new engine. You’ll have to make your new dash and gauges fit the car and make it look ‘right’ for the setting.
Something you have to ‘live with’
All this before you even start the cosmetic restoration of the old donor car’s body and interior. This is why most rest-mod projects never actually get completed. There’s always something that doesn’t fit properly. Something you have to ‘live with’. Some buttons that don’t do anything, some lights that won’t go off or some specific way you have to drive it to make things work.
In a nutshell, this means that when you find a resto-mod built properly by someone who knew what they were doing – it deserves serious appreciation. Whether you actually like the car or not becomes almost irrelevant. You have to respect the work someone put into it. It just so happens that in this case – I respect the work done massively, but I also love the car that resulted.
Presented in a stunning shade of purple/blue, this car started out as a 1984 Chevrolet Corvette. Not a terrible car at the time, it wouldn’t be a great car to live with today. 80’s Corvettes – Corvettes in general in fact, are not exactly a byword for stellar build quality. So driving one today leaves you surrounded by cheap plastics and nasty cheap switchgear. Given their cheap materials, these interiors also aged terribly, and I haven’t seen a vintage ‘vette with a nice interior in a long time. They also didn’t really live up to their performance claims, nor did they handle particularly well.
drive a Corvette to a McDrivethru
This Resto-Mod, bought as a pile of parts and completed by the team at E-Rods in Blackheath, is different. Firstly and most obviously – this is a right hand drive Corvette! You can now drive a Corvette to a McDrivethru without having to stretch to the other side of the car to grab your nuggets.
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Drive is now provided by the legendary LS2 motor, providing 6.0L of noise and horsepower. Given that the Corvette has a huge nose and the LS-range of engines are physically tiny, the transplant wasn’t too tricky. In fact, if you open the ‘hood’ it looks completely stock. It looks like this engine was always meant to be in there. Apart from providing far more power than the original engine, the LS2 in this car is mated to a much more modern 6-speed Auto. Gear changes are super smooth and far more sophisticated than the old Chevvy slush-boxes fitted as standard. Although you get modern power and transmission, the noise is still very much old-school. It’s still a pushrod, cross plain V8, and it sounds as good as you can imagine.
Underneath the car still runs mostly stock Corvette underpinnings. So you don’t get the outright grip of a modern sportscar, however, you do get handling. Predictable handling with tonnes of feedback through the chassis and the wheel. Everything has been rebuilt or refreshed so it works as good as-, if not better- than when it was new. So even though the Resto-vette may not set any lap records, it will put a huge smile on your face. One does need to take care with the pedal on the right though. With this much power in a car this light, with old-school suspension, it can bite. It’s almost too easy to unstick the rear with the throttle. Inexperienced drivers will be terrified, better drivers will fall in love.
materials on the resto-mod are a huge upgrade
Given the awesome driving experience, you will want to spend some time in this car. Luckily the interior is now somewhere you actually want to be! They took the dashboard from the same Lumina that gave the engine. The gauge cluster has been replaced by a very stylish unit from Dakota Digital. The materials are a huge upgrade from the old Corvette equipment.
The seats and door cards have been beautifully trimmed with suede, cross stitched with blue thread. With the Lumina doors much shorter, the door cards are completely custom made, and match the dashboard perfectly. Likewise the dashboard has been trimmed and fitted perfectly in the Corvette cabin. It fits the curvature of the windscreen and is exactly the right size. The dash lines up perfectly with the door cards and all controls are within easy reach. It all looks like a perfect factory fit. Like these parts were meant for this car to start with. No ugly cut lines or awkward trim points.
Most impressively, everything works. The air conditioning is now from a modern 4-door saloon so it keeps the smaller 2-door coupe ice cold. The infotainment system powers up as it should. The Bluetooth works, the CD-player works, the radio works. Even the hard drive recorder which allows you to store music on the system and remove the CD – WORKS! The window switches work, the light switches work. It just operates as any modern car would. Unlike most resto-mod projects, you don’t need to have a training session or a thick manual to drive it. It just works.
couldn’t find 2 donors for the price tag on this resto-mod
Ultimately, this Corvette has the same problem any rest-mod will encounter however. Building a car like this takes a huge investment of time, and unfortunately money. There are no off-the-shelf parts to build a car like this. Fabricating these parts take specialist tools and skilled craftsmen. None of which comes cheap. All of this means that building a car like this, is a labour of love. In fact I tried finding 2 donor cars to recreate this car. Even when looking at badly smashed salvage cars, I couldn’t find 2 donors for the price tag currently on this car. And that still excludes labour costs, plus ALL the extras it would take to get it to this condition.
Sadly then, I must conclude that building a resto-mod is unlikely to be in my future. I simply don’t keep my cars long enough to justify the expense, and ultimately, loss. However, buying something like this Corvette is certainly appealing. The guys at E-Rods have done this resto-mod properly and everything works as it should. It looks and sounds like a classic ‘vette, but drives like a modern car. And the performance is outstanding. You could use this every day if you wanted.
So with such a comparatively modest entry point in terms of investment, and such a special and unique result. The real question is – why wouldn’t you buy a resto-mod?
