Tolman’s restomod take on the 205 GTi adds modern appeal to a hot hatch classic, but how does it fare against our current class champ? James Disdale finds out

PHOTOGR APHY MAX EDLESTON

Nostalgia: according to one dictionary, it’s ‘a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition’. However you define it, there’s no denying there’s a lot of it about these days, from politicians selling us bucolic visions of the past to music and fashion industries that, at the moment at least, appear to be knee-deep in the 1990s.

Yet nowhere is the feeling more pervasive than the automotive sector, where the urgency of the climate crisis and the looming all-in adoption of EV power is making many buyers keen to recapture motoring memories that were filled with a greater sense of freedom and environmental innocence, when hydrocarbons were happily hurled about, the road ahead was always open and the future always seemed brighter. You can see its effect in the steadily rising values of 1980s and 1990s ‘modern classics’, but its influence is most obvious in the skyrocketing popularity of the ‘restomod’.

These restored but tweaked and modified machines aim to infuse the retro appeal of their original subjects with a sheen of modernity that should make them go, stop and steer like a much newer machine – because, let’s face it, on the whole old cars tend to be dynamically, um, suboptimal. However, there’s no escaping the fact that many of these cars are aimed at clientele with considerable means, with cars such as the Singer DLS Turbo perhaps best highlighting this excess-allareas approach to conspicuous consumption.

Expansive glass and thin pillars give the 205 great visibility

The Hyundai has lots of adjustment so it’s easy to get comfortable

❝ However you look at it, the Tolman 205 GTi plays the restomod game to perfection ❞

Yet there are less ostentatious ways to meld the old and new, which is what brings us to the door of Tolman Engineering, on a small industrial estate just outside Rugby in Warwickshire. We’re here to drive Tolman’s sympathetic take on the restomod concept, which aims to blend the looks, character and feel of a historic hot hatch highwater mark with enough bang-upto-date airs and graces to make it a realistic daily runaround, albeit a rather special one: step forward the Tolman Edition 205 GTi.