The Peugeot 205 GTi Tolman Edition Is How A Restomod Should Be Done

Earlier this year, I went on a slightly grumpy rant about the many restomods flooding the collector car world, especially the kind that take old cars and ‘reinterpret’ them with acres of carbon fibre, swollen arches and slightly cheap-looking LED ring lights. Maybe I was in a particularly bad mood that day, but my point stands.

As does the other point I made in that moany piece: I like restomods. Old cars are great, but in the 21st century, we demand certain conveniences, like a cart that actually starts when we turn the key, not just on Wednesdays on odd-numbered days of the month when Mercury’s in retrograde. I was just a bit bored of ‘restomod’ becoming shorthand for ‘stuffing an old car full of slightly too much power and awkwardly trying to shoehorn in modern design cues and materials that don’t really work.’

Which leads me quite nicely onto this small green Peugeot (no, really. I know it looks black in the pictures). Obviously, it’s a 205 GTi, widely hailed as one of the greatest hot hatches of all time. Look closer, though, and you can spot a few little differences – the stance is a smidge lower and wider, the wheels a touch larger. And there’s a little badge on the 205’s distinctive C-pillar that says ‘Tolman Edition’.

That, as you’ll already be aware if you watched a tall ex-cricketer hustle it around an airfield on telly a few years back, means it’s been fettled by Warwickshire-based engineering firm, Tolman Engineering. This wasn’t company founder Chris Tolman’s plan: he started the company following the closure of Mitsubishi’s World Rally Team, where he’d been working.

For many years, motorsport was Tolman’s main endeavour, with car restoration proving a handy side hustle. As it did with many things, Covid flipped that on its head – racing activities dried up, and restoration became Tolman’s bread and butter. That was when Chris decided to start fettling the 205 GTi.

“The 205 was something I’d always been passionate about, that I’d had when I was a kid,” explains Chris. “I had one here, we were using it as a marketing tool… and I thought, ‘yeah, I can improve this’.”

Those improvements nearly all hinge on making the 205 GTi more usable on a day-to-day basis. To begin with, a donor car is stripped back to bare metal and subject to a concours-grade restoration, with pretty much every component replaced. A modern ECU, remote locking, new seats, a Bluetooth-equipped head unit and subtle LED headlights all contribute to a more usable product.

The oily bits aren’t completely untouched, though. New roll bars, springs and Bilstein dampers – all built to Tolman’s specifications – are fitted, but they’re all passive and non-adjustable: “If you want a track car, we’ll build you a track car, but this is a road car,” says Chris. Engine-wise, the pistons, conrods, valve springs and cams are all replaced with bespoke new items, and the hotter ‘Evo’ version gets a 16-valve head – something the 205 was never available with from the factory.

Crucially, though, the casual onlooker wouldn’t notice the slightest difference to the diminutive hot hatch they were lusting over in the ’80s – a very deliberate move. “We’re not changing what the car looks like because that’s what people remember, that’s what they want,” says Chris. “It’s like going to see your favourite band in concert. You want the same songs, you don’t want the lyrics changed… you just want it turned up to 11.”

This may seem like a bucking of trends next to the current breed of swollen-arched, carbon-clad restomods, but that’s just the point. It’s not about trying to radically change what Peugeot did in the ’80s – there’s a reason the 205 GTi is so beloved, after all. It’s about embracing the spirit of the original, and just smoothing off a few rough edges.

Now, I’ve never driven a standard 205 GTi, but I’ve seen it make the podium in enough ‘Best Hot Hatches of All Time’ listicles to know roughly what to expect. Agile. Light-footed. Direct. Not particularly refined, and with a few of the quirks you’d expect from a 1980s French car.

That last one is very apparent when I climb into the squishy, upright leather seats – a universe away from the kind of firm but contoured buckets you find in modern hot hatches. Setting it as far back as it’ll go – a necessity for anyone approaching six feet – I find the non-adjustable wheel sitting pretty much in my lap. Suboptimal, but just as it would have been in the original – and besides, we’re not exactly going to be hitting the sort of speeds necessitating a race-car driving position.

Both 1.6- and 1.9-litre 205 GTis can be turned into Tolman Editions. This car’s a 1.6, and while Tolman doesn’t quote a power figure, reckon on a modest increase over the 115bhp produced by the original.

Frankly, with less than 900kg to shift about, whatever power it’s making is plenty. I’m taken aback by how immediate the engine’s response and low-end strength is, imbuing the car with a nippiness that’s apparent from a standstill.

The engine – breathing through a bespoke exhaust that visually mimics the distinctively downturned original – is also a reminder of just what a lovely thing an old-school, free-breathing four-cylinder is. In an era when nearly every performance four-cylinder is a muted turbo unit, it sounds crisp and throaty and feels gutsy, revvy and endlessly exploitable – a reminder of what we’re missing.

The five-speed manual ’box is worked by a big wandy shifter emerging from a low centre console. At first, it feels slightly vague and loose, something that Tolman likely could have addressed, but chose not to. That shift, after all, is part of the 205 GTi experience, and it doesn’t take long before you’re used to it and able to work it together with the tiny pedals for some lovely, blippy downshifts.

Of course, what everyone really remembers about the GTi is its handling, and that’s very much intact. The steering doesn’t quite crackle with the level of feel you necessarily expect from an old car, but it’s still miles chattier than anything modern.

Flowing country roads like these – not necessarily the best for going full helmsmith and taking a car’s handling, in a gravelly voice, to the limit – still highlight how promptly the 205 responds to steering inputs, and how confidence-inspiring it is as you motor along.

This is aided by Tolman’s new suspension setup – it’s firmed up a little, but you can get away with that in a car so light, and it’s obvious it’s been developed with naff British roads in mind. It allows the 205 to stay flat in corners, but it never feels punishingly hard and the playfulness that won the original so many admirers is very much there.

Similarly, our drive never really offered up the chance to put the brakes to the test, but the joy of a relatively low-powered, very light car like this is that it doesn’t need coffee-table-sized carbon ceramics with million-piston callipers. The brakes are just brakes, and with maintaining momentum such an integral part of the experience, you rarely feel the need to trouble them on these roads.

Basically, buzzing around the countryside in the Tolman Edition feels like driving an old car. It looks old, feels old, and even smells old, and it gets the enthusiastic response from onlookers as old cars do. Because that’s what it is – an old car. But it’s one that, in theory, you can use every day without fearing that it won’t start and that if it does, bits will fall off as you drive along. That, in my mind at least, is what a restomod should be.

I’m evidently not alone, because Tolman has nearly sold out the planned run of 25 Tolman Editions, despite an entry point of around £75,000 – before a donor car’s been sourced. Even today, with prices on the up, that’s obviously quite a lot for a 205 GTi, but the depth of the work that’s gone into it makes it feel worthwhile. And besides, because nearly everything’s thrown out and replaced, donors can be on the raggedier, cheaper end of the GTi spectrum – Chris only recommends finding one with serviceable bodywork.

Surely, with so much praise heaped on the 205, we can expect limited-run Tolman Editions of other cars? Well, probably not, as it turns out. A run of 205s was decided on following a high level of interest after the car’s Top Gear appearance, but it’s unlikely to be followed up. “I don’t think we’d go down the route of doing a run of fixed-price ones [again],” says Chris. “It becomes so difficult in terms of the price and getting everything there.”

Instead, future Tolman restomods are likely to be one-off commissions, tailored to whatever a given customer wants. The 205 effectively served as a shop window for this part of the business, and it’s already clearly paying off. Among the treats in the firm’s deceptively expansive workshops when I visit are an original Mini, a gorgeous old 105-series Alfa Giulia, a Lotus Elite and, most intriguingly, a Peugeot 405, all undergoing varying degrees of changes to make them more amenable to regular, sustained use. In other words, restoring and modernising. Hey, someone should come up with a word for that.