Restomod royalty: meet the Tolman Engineering team

By Charlie Calderwood

| 20 Apr 2026

Classic & Sports Car – The specialist: Tolman Engineering

If a business studies lecturer were ever looking for a case study in the importance of flexibility, then Warwickshire-based, classic-car specialist Tolman Engineering is surely it.

When Classic & Sports Car last visited the firm in 2012, it had become one of the leading specialists in Lotus Elites.

Now, with the Tolman Edition 205 GTI receiving universal acclaim for putting new hot hatches to shame in the pages of Autocar et al, it has adopted another personality: maker of great restomods of the modern classic era.

These changes have rarely followed any great masterplan, but been forced by changing weathers.

This recommissioned Ford RS 200 has been given a new ECU by Tolman Engineering

COVID-19 and its resultant lockdowns in 2020 were the last point of inflection for the company.

Prior to that, it had been moving from strength to strength doing small-scale development work for manufacturers (none of which can be mentioned specifically), running racing teams for other parties (including McLaren’s driver development program) and competing in GT racing itself.

“McLaren basically stopped overnight,” says founder and director Chris Tolman. “We had to trim down our full-time staff from 12 to four.”

Like many others who were stuck with what to do during those closed-off months of 2020, Tolman turned to a project that had been waiting in the shed – Chris’ own Peugeot 205 GTI.

A Peugeot 306 GTI intake manifold is reworked for a 205 GTI

As the son of a Peugeot dealer, he had owned plenty of the auto maker’s hot-hatch 205 GTIs in the past and bought one prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, purely for his own purposes and enjoyment.

“It was just a little bit of nostalgia at first,” he tells us. “I thought, ‘we could put a modern ECU in it, we do that with everything else,’ and we just started doing improvements from there, really.”

It’s fair to say it’s snowballed somewhat – but most definitely in a good way.

That development car (the black example that is pictured above) would go on to help form the now established Tolman method.

Chris Tolman’s personal Peugeot 205 GTI became the prototype for his firm’s carefully crafted restomods

“We didn’t want to change the capacity of the car, because that’s not allowed in a lot of countries,” explains Chris.

“We also wanted to keep the alloy block, while lots of later Peugeot engines use iron blocks.”

Instead of the well-proven route of swapping in the 16-valve XU10 engine (from a Peugeot 405 Mi16 Mk2) or a later, turbocharged unit, Tolman re-engineered the cylinder head from a 306 GTI to fit the 205’s powerplant.

On-road drivability, handling dynamics and tidiness of installation were the aims of the build, rather than cheap power. And it seems this attitude chimed with others, too.

Chris Tolman founded Tolman Engineering in 2007, and it has since become a byword for upgraded Peugeot 205 GTIs

Not only did orders start coming in for the tweaked Peugeot 205 GTI, but customers soon approached the company to restomod their classic cars in the Tolman mold.

That has so far included a Mini Cooper ‘S’, while in the workshop during our time with this company we find a BMW E30 3 Series Touring.

Tolman sourced a magnesium-alloy block for the BMW’s M20 straight-six engine to push the weight distribution rearwards, but also insisted on fitting wheels of no larger than 16in in diameter.

“It’s not about making the most powerful car, that’s easy. It’s about making a really good road car,” adds Chris, reflecting this specialist’s considered approach.

This Mitsubishi Galant is an echo of Chris Tolman’s seven years at RalliArt, from 2000

Among this company’s recent projects are a Ford Escort XR3i and a Talbot Sunbeam Lotus, and Chris is waiting for the chance for two more he’d like to do: a Renault 5 Turbo and a Lotus Esprit Turbo.

“You could do an Esprit with a small turbo, a single plenum and an ECU. There’s a lot of room to improve it and you’d have a great-driving car,” he says.

“We’ve always done other things [beside motorsport], but the 205 made it clear that lots of people didn’t know that we did,” continues Chris.

“It seems we have now hit a note with those people.”

Images: Jack Harrison

The knowledge

Name Tolman Engineering
Address Unit B, The Old Station Yard, Oxford Road, Marton, Warwickshire, CV23 9RU, UK
Specialism Performance upgrades, restoration and motorsport
Prices £90/hour
Staff 16
Tel 01926 633080
Web tolmanengineering.co.uk

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