Category Archives: Restomod

Restomod

Totem Euforia Debuts as a 640-HP Carbon-Fiber Alfa Giulia GT Restomod

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Some restomods chase nostalgia. Others chase performance. Totem Automobili’s latest creation somehow manages to chase both while wearing a custom silk suit.

Called Euforia, this one-off interpretation of the 1960s Alfa Romeo Giulia GT is the latest handcrafted masterpiece from the Italian specialist, and it arrives with an unexpected collaborator: legendary Neapolitan fashion house E. Marinella. The result isn’t simply a modified classic—it’s an automotive couture piece that happens to launch to 62 mph in 3.2 seconds.

Totem has built its reputation by reinventing the iconic Giulia GT from the ground up, wrapping a thoroughly modern machine in unmistakably Italian lines. Carbon-fiber body panels, dramatically widened fenders, and obsessive attention to detail have become the company’s signature, and Euforia raises the bar even further.

Finished in a vibrant Oro di Capri orange inspired by the golden sunsets of the Amalfi Coast, the coupe made its public debut at the latest Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. It’s impossible to ignore. The color alone turns the elegant shape into rolling Mediterranean artwork, while every curve reflects the painstaking craftsmanship hiding beneath.

Open the featherweight doors and the fashion influence becomes impossible to miss.

E. Marinella, a name synonymous with handmade luxury accessories for more than a century, transformed the cockpit into something resembling a bespoke Italian lounge. Hand-dyed silk—the same material the company uses for its famous ties—appears throughout the cabin alongside rich blue leather that covers nearly every visible surface.

The matching blue Sabelt bucket seats strike a balance between race car and luxury grand tourer, while a custom hand luggage bag finished in the same leather reminds occupants that exclusivity extends beyond the dashboard.

Fortunately, Totem didn’t forget the analog driving experience while dressing the cabin for Milan Fashion Week. A classic three-spoke aluminum steering wheel sits directly ahead of the driver, and the exposed aluminum gated shifter provides the tactile satisfaction that modern performance cars increasingly lack. Every shift becomes an event rather than a necessity.

As beautiful as the interior may be, the real centerpiece lives under the sculpted hood.

While Totem also offers an all-electric interpretation of its carbon-bodied Giulia GT, Euforia embraces combustion in spectacular fashion. Power comes from the company’s in-house developed ITV6 Gloria, a 2.8-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engineered in collaboration with Italtecnica Engineering.

The numbers tell only part of the story: 640 horsepower and 483 pound-feet (655 Nm) of torque sent exclusively to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission.

Even more impressive is what those figures have to move. Thanks to extensive use of carbon fiber, the entire car tips the scales at just 2,601 pounds (1,180 kilograms). The resulting power-to-weight ratio places Euforia firmly in supercar territory, with a claimed 0–62 mph sprint of just 3.2 seconds.

The soundtrack should be every bit as memorable as the acceleration. Totem turned to Capristo—the exhaust specialist whose reputation was built supplying systems for Ferrari—to create an open exhaust setup that promises to transform every tunnel into a private concert hall.

Keeping all that performance under control are lightweight 18-inch wheels wrapped in Michelin’s highest-performance rubber, backed by an electronically controlled adaptive suspension featuring multi-adjustable dampers. It’s a thoroughly modern chassis hidden beneath a silhouette that first appeared more than half a century ago.

Pricing remains as exclusive as the craftsmanship, with personalization ensuring buyers can easily exceed €600,000 before adding their own touches. Yet that almost seems beside the point.

Euforia isn’t attempting to be the fastest restomod or the most faithful recreation of an Alfa Romeo icon. Instead, it occupies a category of its own, where automotive engineering meets Italian fashion, carbon fiber replaces nostalgia, and a manual gearbox serves as the finishing stitch on a hand-tailored masterpiece.

Some cars are built to be driven. Others are built to be admired.

Totem’s Euforia was clearly designed to do both—preferably on a winding coastal road where the orange paint glows in the sunset and the Capristo exhaust echoes off the cliffs of Amalfi.

Source: Totem Automobili

Restomod

This BMW E9 CSL Restomod Is the V8-Powered M Car BMW Never Built

The BMW E9 CSL occupies a sacred place in the brand’s history. Lightweight, elegant, and instantly recognizable thanks to its dramatic “Batmobile” aero package, it remains one of Munich’s most celebrated performance cars. Yet for all its motorsport pedigree, the original CSL never enjoyed the kind of power modern enthusiasts crave.

That’s where this remarkable one-off creation comes in.

Built roughly a decade ago by German workshop MKO, founded by BMW enthusiast Michael Oberhauser, this machine answers a question nobody at BMW ever officially dared ask: What if an E9 CSL had been developed using the heart and soul of an E39 M5?

The answer is sitting before us in steel, aluminum, and hand-crafted ingenuity.

Rather than performing a simple engine swap, MKO essentially merged two generations of BMW performance legends into a single cohesive package. The project reportedly began with an E39 M5 and components sourced from two E9 CS coupes. What followed was a painstaking transformation that blended 1970s styling with the engineering of one of BMW’s greatest modern sports sedans.

The surgery went far beyond cosmetic alterations. According to details from the original build story, the upper structure of the M5 was removed, the wheelbase shortened by nearly eight inches, and an E9 roof grafted onto the modified chassis. The goal wasn’t simply to recreate the look of a classic coupe—it was to preserve its delicate proportions while retaining the mechanical sophistication underneath.

Achieving that balance required extensive bodywork. The front fenders were widened by roughly 2.5 inches, while the rear arches gained around four inches of additional width. Much of the custom fabrication was completed in Romania, where craftsmen hand-formed bespoke body panels to create a seamless blend of old and new.

The finished product looks as though BMW’s skunkworks division secretly built a restomod decades before the term became fashionable.

Visual cues pay tribute to the legendary 3.0 CSL “Batmobile,” including a roof-mounted spoiler, small front-fender aero fins, classic Hella driving lamps, and period-inspired badging. The body wears Porsche-sourced paint and now rides on 19-inch Alpina-style wheels wrapped in sticky Continental SportContact 7 tires. Early versions reportedly wore standard E39 M5 wheels, but the current setup better suits the car’s muscular stance.

Inside, the modern underpinnings become more apparent. A modified E39 M5 dashboard remains in place, accompanied by heated Recaro seats, dual-zone climate control, power windows, and a Pioneer touchscreen infotainment system. It’s an unusual mix of classic grand tourer and modern sports sedan, complete with creative engineering solutions such as relocating the driver’s window switch to the center console.

The real star, however, lives beneath the hood.

Power comes from BMW’s legendary 4.9-liter S62 V8, the naturally aspirated masterpiece that made the E39 M5 a performance benchmark. In this application, the engine has been reworked to produce 432 horsepower, all sent exclusively to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip differential.

Considering the E9’s significantly smaller dimensions and lower visual mass, the combination borders on outrageous.

Handling upgrades include adjustable KW coilovers and the M5’s braking hardware, giving the car the stopping power and chassis control needed to keep pace with its muscular powertrain. The result is less a restoration than a BMW hot rod—one that combines the analogue charm of the 1970s with the mechanical confidence of one of the greatest M cars ever built.

It’s the sort of machine that could only exist outside BMW’s corporate walls: too expensive, too complicated, and perhaps too niche for production. Yet that’s exactly what makes it so fascinating.

Now, after years of turning heads and challenging conventional BMW history, this singular creation is looking for a new caretaker. Listed through Bring a Trailer Germany, the hand-built CSL-M5 hybrid had attracted bids of €42,225 at the time of writing.

For BMW enthusiasts, that’s a small price for a glimpse into an alternate universe—one where the E9 CSL never stopped evolving.

Source: Autocar

Restomod

This Twin-Turbo Porsche 964 Restomod Packs Supercar Punch

Few names in the Porsche restomod universe carry the mythic weight of Singer Vehicle Design. But from a discreet workshop in Friedrichshafen, Germany, another outfit is building a compelling argument that the air-cooled 911 aftermarket has room for more than one king.

Meet the PR964, a carbon-bodied, twin-turbocharged reinterpretation of the Porsche 964 from Pogea Racing and its boutique heritage division, Pogea.classics. And while Singer leans heavily into California-cool nostalgia, the Germans approach the same formula with the precision—and occasional excess—of a high-end engineering exercise.

At its core, the PR964 starts life as a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 from the 964 generation, though “starts life” might be generous considering how little of the original car survives untouched. Pogea strips the donor chassis to its final bolt before rebuilding it with reinforced structure, modern corrosion protection, and a level of finish likely superior to what rolled out of Stuttgart in the early 1990s.

Then comes the transformation.

The redesigned body panels are handcrafted entirely from carbon fiber, giving the 964 a sharper, more muscular stance without turning it into caricature. The widened rear decklid borrows visual cues from the original 930 Turbo and even the legendary Porsche 959, creating a silhouette that feels familiar until you notice how tightly everything has been modernized.

Underneath that retro-futuristic skin sits a trio of powertrain options, all derived from Porsche’s air-cooled 3.6-liter M64 flat-six. Purists can choose a naturally aspirated version with improved throttle response and a thoroughly refreshed internals package. But restraint clearly wasn’t the primary goal here.

Step up to the single-turbo setup and output jumps from the original 250 horsepower to roughly 400 hp. And for buyers who think subtlety is overrated, Pogea offers a 4.0-liter twin-turbo configuration producing more than 500 horsepower and over 600 Nm of torque, all routed to all four wheels through a manual gearbox.

In other words, this thing likely accelerates with the kind of violence the original 964 engineers never intended.

The hardware supporting those numbers is equally serious. Every PR964 receives adjustable KW Clubsport suspension, revised stabilizers, and a massive carbon-ceramic brake package featuring 400-mm front discs paired with aluminum-titanium calipers. The original 964 already felt compact and communicative by modern standards; with less weight and substantially more power, the Pogea creation sounds like it operates somewhere between vintage sports car and barely civilized race machine.

Inside, Pogea avoids the temptation to over-style the cabin. Leather, Alcantara, and exposed carbon fiber dominate the interior, while deeply bolstered Recaro seats and a classic Momo Prototipo steering wheel deliver the expected restomod visual cues. There’s even a subwoofer mounted behind the seats—a reminder that despite the obsessive engineering, this is still intended to be driven, loudly and often.

Like Singer, Pogea.classics insists no two builds are identical. Buyers can personalize nearly every surface, material, and finish, including the multilayer matte-gray paint developed with Glasurit. That level of customization—and the labor-intensive process behind it—means pricing lands firmly in the territory occupied by exotic supercars and limited-production hypercars.

Which is precisely the point.

The PR964 isn’t merely a restored Porsche. It’s a statement aimed directly at the established hierarchy of the restomod world: proof that Germany has no intention of letting California monopolize the art of reinventing the air-cooled 911.

Source: Pogea.classics