Drive Different: Restomods and Iconic Automobiles Reimagined
by Mikey Snelgar
“It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the term restomod began circulating in earnest. By then car culture had matured—and fractured. On one side were the preservationists and the classic-car world, obsessed with patina and period-correct bolts. On the other hand, a new generation of collectors saw vintage metal as raw and affordable material for creating something deeply personal.”
Insert the word “something” into the title and you’d see that this book is not about the act of driving differently but about the vehicles in which the driving is done. Forty-eight are featured in this book and if you’re not in the habit of thinking about custom cars you’ll be surprised at the variety, the technical and design execution . . . and the cost which, while never overtly mentioned in this book (with one albeit vague exception) becomes apparent quickly enough when you study the photos.
This chapter is titled “A 90-Year-Old F1 Car for the Road.” Audi built this Type 52 in 2023.
Sometimes it’s the police that pulls over cars just to gawk—in this case it would be the other way around!
That excerpt above, by Classic Driver editor-in-chief Jan Baedeker, will hit home uncomfortably close to anyone with catholic interests in cars and culture: “matured—and fractured” . . . you’d have to live under a rock not to know that that is exactly where the tension is these days. Also, it is what makes the restomod concept different from the earlier hot rod or muscle car movements that would probably be top of mind for American readers thinking about the history of individualizing or customizing cars, be it at the hand of individuals or automakers. And if you were inclined to write restomods off as a passing fad, even when they’re done at the level shown here, consider that a bunch of big-name bankers—J.P.MorganChase—included this book on their NextList2026 among the 11 must-reads that “spotlight what books and experiences are breaking new ground in the year ahead.”
The Aston Martin Bulldog concept car may have been the world’s first hypercar, except the world forgot all about it. It ended up with a Saudi prince.
A quick clarification if you do start hunting for this book (especially years from now when the trail will have gone cold): the name we list as author, Mikey Snelgar, does not occur as such in the book, except that the Impressum page lists him as “Texts by” but then also as one of three editors. He is a professional automotive photographer and journalist, and, relevant to this book’s backstory, affiliated with the Swiss outfit Classic Driver which is both a magazine and an online resource and marketplace for mostly classic and performance cars as well as luxury lifestyle items. The fella who launched it, entrepreneur Alexander Knapp Voith, had cut his teeth in the luxury custom car segment which must be why Classic Driver is given an “in collaboration with” credit.
If Oilstainlab and Lanzante or Get Lost and Everrati feature in your everyday conversation, you’ll be right at home here. But there are not only boutique shops included here but established carmakers such as Audi, BMW, Renault, Porsche who have created their own in-house restomods or collaborated with outside specialists. European and American work dominates whereas Japanese shops are notably absent even though they have a very large footprint on the global scene.
The book has no conventional Index but instead an alphabetical listing of the makers (with websites and the photographers used).
The cars are presented in no discernible order, but it doesn’t really matter. The first one covered is an 8C Alfa, which would seem to be the sort of car too new and too fully thought out to benefit from modification. It is followed by a Bronco truck and now you’re beginning to see the thruline: everything can be improved—this isn’t about customizing in the sense of personalization but adding technology and features that were not available or feasible at the time of the original build. A more obvious example would be a 1950s Rolls-Royce, now fully electrified—it only took 5500 hours and 11000 new parts to make it so (below); or a BMW Garmisch or Aston Martin Bulldog concept car that each disappeared in time and only now came back to life, half a decade and more later.
The Phantom V models had wholly bespoke coachwork but underneath the skin was basically the same chassis whereas this one-off looks pretty much stock from the outside and is rejiggered underneath.
No matter what you think of such vehicles, the art and craft they display is staggeringly impressive and authentic and undeniable. The same applies to German publisher Gestalten who once again has strung together a book—landscape format, really good photos, high-quality paper and printing—that has a point of view and a purpose.
Forget those delectable Lancias for a moment and focus on the typography instead and how columns 1 and 2 interact.
Copyright 2026, Sabu Advani (speedreaders.info).
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