Now, when you’re restoring or maintaining an old car, you’re probably going to modify. Sometimes a bit, sometimes a lot. Sometimes intentionally, because you want to make it corner that bit better or because you want a little more power or because you want a slightly better sound. Sometimes it’s a case of needs must: parts scarcity, say.
But does that make it a restomod? Taking it literally and semantically, yes: it’s restored and modified.
Nor is it a modern phenomenon, despite the way it sometimes feels. Strip it all down and making a car go faster – differently? – to how its maker intended is as old as the motorcar. Modern restomods are simply synonyms for specials. It’s just somebody, somewhere, coined the term restomod.
Reboots and Restomods is the central display on Sunday 5 October, and those two terms are actually closer than they might appear. Both a reboot and restomod is taking something old and out of production and making it new again. Better? Depends on your point of view.
But that’s not for us to decide. This is about cars getting new life breathed into them either on the production line and the nameplate, or in small volume at a specialist. Subtly or spectacularly.
So is every old but updated and uprated car eligible for a spot on the main display at the Scramble in October? Well there’s only so much space to go around, so for better or worse some lines need to be drawn in the sand.
To be eligible for the restomod spots, it’d need to be bought and not built by you. It would need to be from a limited series of cars, not a one-off.
New small-scale restomods are released every day, so we’ll be keeping our cards close to our chest for now, but if you’ve bought an old car with modern uprated running gear from a limited run, let us know below. It doesn’t have to be a Singer.