Restomod Development

Every restomod starts with an idea. We begin with the kind of car you want to build, so we can work out where the market for it sits. In this phase we create a first set of sketches for both the brand (the branding guidelines, the logo, the tagline) and the car itself, so you get a feel for what the car can become in the long term. This is also the material we use later in the business deck.

As soon as we have the sketches, we turn to the business model. What should the price point of the car be, and what does that involve? Who is the target audience, and how do we reach them? What do we need in money and materials to get there, and how big is the market? The restomod market is crowded right now, so it pays to establish early whether there is enough room in the specific niche where you want to operate.

Once the business model stands and the funding is in place, we start developing the first car, entirely digitally. We scan an existing chassis and build the car from that scan in CAD: suspension, brakes, geometry and all the new interior and exterior parts. From this we can see what the total bill of materials looks like. At this stage it is a rough version of the car, with around 50 percent of the parts in place and the rest still to be designed, but it is the start of detailed budgeting.

With a clear picture of what the car should be, we build the team that will actually construct the prototype. That team needs people who can draw, the engineers (which we can provide), and mechanics who can build the car. Just as importantly, the team should breathe the brand we are building.

Now we test whether what works in CAD also works in real life. We build the parts and mount them on the new chassis, piece by piece: first the roll cage, then the suspension and driveline, then the engine and electronics, and finally the interior and exterior panels, until the car is complete. This process takes somewhere between 18 and 36 months.

Everything drawn in CAD is great, but it has to become producible. Making a roll cage once is easy; making it identical 20, 30 or 100 times is hard. So we transform every part into a form that can be produced in series. We then build series prototypes one and two alongside each other with a short delay between them, so anything that didn't go right on the first car is improved on the next.

Once the third car is done, we hand the program over to your team. From there you take over the company, and we can focus on developing the next version of the car. If you built a road-legal car, for example, we can help you create a track-focused or off-road version, so you get more revenue out of development costs you have already made.