Category Archives: Restomod

Restomod

Eagle E-Type Lightweight GTR: The Jaguar That Remembers What It Means to Be a Jaguar

Enzo Ferrari once called the Jaguar E-Type “the most beautiful car ever made.” He wasn’t wrong. Sixty-odd years later, the car still looks like it was sketched by a deity with a taste for long bonnets and dangerous curves. But while Jaguar itself seems to have traded its soul for silence — with a future full of EVs and corporate PowerPoints — one British outfit is determined to remind us what the big cat once was.

That outfit is Eagle, and for over four decades they’ve been fettling, perfecting, and flat-out worshipping the E-Type. Their latest creation, the Eagle E-Type Lightweight GTR, isn’t just another restomod. It’s a rolling love letter to speed, purity, and the kind of mechanical theatre modern cars have forgotten how to perform.

Featherweight Fury

The name tells you most of the story. “Lightweight” doesn’t just mean a few panels swapped for aluminium. Eagle’s engineers went full monk on the diet plan: aluminum, magnesium, titanium, and carbon fiber everywhere. The result? A kerb weight of just 930 kilograms — yes, about the same as a first-gen Mazda MX-5, but with an entirely different appetite for violence.

Beneath that long, impossibly beautiful bonnet lives a 4.7-litre straight-six, hand-built and gloriously mechanical. It sends 450 horsepower and 500 Nm of torque through a Getrag five-speed manual to the rear wheels. There are no flappy paddles, no digital trickery — just clutch, lever, and the guttural snarl of unfiltered combustion. 0–100 km/h arrives in four seconds flat, and if you keep your foot down, the GTR will howl all the way to 305 km/h.

Handling the Heritage

To keep all that feral energy in check, Eagle’s fitted Ohlins adjustable dampers, independent suspension, and AP Racing brakes that could probably stop a small planet. The result is a car that’s razor-sharp but never synthetic. It moves, it breathes, it talks to you through the wheel — not through a touchscreen or a mood light.

Inside, there’s a nod to civility. Alcantara-trimmed seats, air conditioning, a subtle audio system, and decent sound insulation make sure your spine doesn’t file for divorce after a few hundred miles. It’s the perfect balance between Le Mans weekend and Cotswolds getaway.

A Million Reasons to Smile (and Cry)

Now, the price. Eagle will happily build you one for just over a million euros. Which sounds obscene, until you remember that this isn’t a car so much as an act of resurrection. It’s what happens when passion, craftsmanship, and mechanical purity are valued over efficiency charts and app connectivity.

Meanwhile, at Jaguar HQ…

And here’s the sting. While Eagle handcrafts reminders of Jaguar’s golden age, the actual Jaguar brand seems adrift — steering toward an electric future that feels more spreadsheet than soul. The Lightweight GTR stands as both a tribute and a quiet protest. It whispers (loudly) what the world’s carmakers seem to have forgotten: that weight is the enemy, noise is good, and beauty should always come before battery percentage.

In the end, Eagle hasn’t just built the ultimate E-Type. They’ve built a time machine — one that doesn’t take you back, but shows you what the present could have been, had we never lost our nerve.

Source: Eagle

Restomod

Retro Muscle, Modern Fury: Trans Am Worldwide’s Chevelle 70/SS Is a 1,500-HP Time Machine

Trans Am Worldwide has never been content to let the muscle car era fade into nostalgia. Based in Tallahassee, Florida, the outfit made its name resurrecting icons like the Firebird and Trans Am, injecting them with modern engineering while keeping the attitude of Detroit’s golden age intact. Now, under founder Tod Warmack, the same crew has turned its sights on another heavyweight from the annals of American performance—the Chevrolet Chevelle SS. The result is a brutal, beautiful piece of retro Americana called the Chevelle 70/SS, and it might just be the most audacious restomod in the country.

From Camaro Bones to Chevelle Soul

At its core, the Chevelle 70/SS starts life as a sixth-generation Chevrolet Camaro. But to call it a Camaro in disguise would be an insult. Almost every visible trace of the donor car has been exorcised, replaced with custom carbon-fiber body panels that echo the broad shoulders and squared-off aggression of the 1970 Chevelle SS. Up front, the transformation is most striking—a newly designed chrome bumper, round headlights set deep within a bespoke grille, and the kind of stance that looks ready to pick a fight. Out back, the lines are pure ’70s muscle, from the squared rear quarters to the ducktail lip spoiler.

This particular example, finished in Autumn Gold with black racing stripes, isn’t just a tribute—it’s personal. The car was commissioned by Earl Newman, who owns the original 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle “Pilot Car,” the earliest-documented LS6-powered Chevelle in existence. After paying $220,000 for that piece of history, Newman wanted a modern counterpart. Trans Am Worldwide delivered exactly that—and then some.

Power Beyond Reason

Buyers can spec their Chevelle 70/SS in one of three trims: Base, 396 Heritage, and the range-topping 454 LS6X Limited Edition. Each can be ordered with increasingly unhinged levels of power.

The Base version packs a 5.7-liter LT1 V8, good for 425 horsepower in naturally aspirated form—or up to 800 hp when force-fed by a supercharger. Step up to the 396 Heritage, and the 6.6-liter (402 cubic inch) V8 offers between 800 and 900 hp, depending on your choice of supercharger or twin turbos.

But the real insanity begins with the 454 LS6X Limited Edition, of which only 20 examples will be built. This monster houses a 7.4-liter V8 that can be configured three ways: a 900-hp supercharged version, a 1,000-hp twin-turbo setup, or—if you’re truly deranged—a 1,500-horsepower twin-turbo build.

Newman chose door number three. The same man who owns the first LS6 Chevelle now has a modern one that makes more power than a Bugatti Chiron—1,479 hp for the French hypercar, 1,500 for the Floridian throwback. One can only imagine the sensory overload of stomping the throttle in a car that looks like 1970 but accelerates like 2070.

Old School Craft, New School Engineering

Every panel on the 70/SS is carbon fiber, shaped and assembled in-house by Trans Am Worldwide’s team. Despite the old-school lines, this isn’t a brute from the past—it’s a thoroughly modern piece of engineering. The chassis and suspension geometry from the Camaro platform remain, meaning the car benefits from modern handling, brakes, and safety systems. The company even engineered a removable hardtop and a functional soft top, making the 70/SS both a coupe and convertible at will.

Inside, the cabin pays homage to classic Chevelle cues but doesn’t skimp on comfort. Think retro-stitched leather, analog-inspired gauges, and enough modern tech to remind you this isn’t your uncle’s barn find.

The Price of Nostalgia

All this American excess comes at a price. The Chevelle 70/SS starts around $195,000, and Newman’s one-off 1,500-hp build easily doubles that. But you’re not just buying a car—you’re buying a conversation piece, a slice of reimagined history with the capability to outrun just about anything wearing a license plate.

Trans Am Worldwide’s Chevelle 70/SS isn’t subtle, and it’s not meant to be. It’s a love letter to one of the most iconic muscle cars ever built, rewritten for a world where the internal combustion engine is on borrowed time. With looks that stop traffic and performance that borders on science fiction, this machine proves that in Tallahassee, at least, the muscle car era isn’t dying quietly—it’s roaring louder than ever.

Source: Trans Am Worldwide via YouTube

Restomod

Totem GT Super Farina: The Alfa Romeo Restomod That’s Pure Italian Poetry

If Singer has rewritten the gospel of the Porsche 911, then Totem Automobili might just be Italy’s answer to that divine restoration craft — except their scripture is written in the language of Alfa Romeo. And this, the Totem GT Super Farina, might be their Sistine Chapel.

Only 40 examples will ever exist, each one hand-built with the kind of passion that makes you want to speak with your hands while talking about it. It’s based on Alfa Romeo bones — but “based on” is like saying the Mona Lisa is “based on a woman.” What Totem has done here is nothing short of automotive alchemy.

A Shade Straight Out of the Seventies

The owner of this particular GT Super clearly wasn’t interested in blending in. He ordered his dream machine in Luci del Bosco, a luscious metallic brown inspired by the earthy tones of 1970s Italian exotica. It’s the sort of colour that looks different every time the light hits it — sometimes liquid bronze, sometimes molten espresso. Add in gold-painted rims, satin nickel accents, and a full carbon-fibre body treated with Totem’s extended satin finish, and you’ve got a restomod that looks like it should be parked outside a Lake Como villa, waiting for the espresso machine to finish.

Retro Soul, Modern Precision

From every angle, the Farina looks impossibly right. The stance, the proportions, the delicious blend of old-school romance and new-school aggression — it’s all there. It’s as if someone took a vintage Alfa and whispered, “you deserve better,” before rebuilding it molecule by molecule.

Open the door, and the theatre continues. The cabin is wrapped in ivory Nappa leather, with Alcantara, carbon fibre, and brushed metal making cameo appearances. The machined aluminium switchgear feels like it was carved by watchmakers, not fabricators. And then there’s that manual gearbox, crowned with a wooden shift knob — a glorious rebellion in an age of paddles and screens.

Heart of a Modern Italian Beast

Under the bonnet, Totem could’ve played it safe with a lightly warmed-over Alfa twin-cam. But that’s not their style. Instead, they teamed up with Italtechnica, who conjured a twin-turbo 2.8-litre V6 that sounds like it was tuned by Pavarotti’s pit crew.

In its “standard” form, it delivers 600 horsepower and 700 Nm of torque — but if you tick the right box, you’ll get 750 hp and 986 Nm, which are numbers that start to feel a little… unholy. All that in a compact, lightweight body that channels its power through a proper manual? That’s not nostalgia — that’s nirvana.

The Price of Passion

At €539,000, the GT Super Farina isn’t just expensive — it’s exclusive. You could buy a small fleet of Giulia Quadrifoglios for that. But none of them would feel like this. None would blend 1960s romance with 2020s performance so seamlessly.

Totem hasn’t just made a car; they’ve made an emotion you can drive. A tribute to Alfa Romeo’s soul, to Italian craftsmanship, and to the art of making machinery that moves you — literally and spiritually.

If the GT Super Farina proves anything, it’s that sometimes, il cuore sportivo still beats loudest when it’s hand-built, polished to perfection, and painted the colour of autumn sunlight over Tuscany.

Source: Totem Automobili