The restomod industry is booming. There is a seemingly limitless demand for ever-more bespoke renditions of classic motoring icons, restored, reimagined, or reconfigured for life in a modern age while still honoring the original character that defined them. Among those cars, early Porsche 911s are some of the most desirable.
Restomod Porsches typically offer upgraded brakes and suspension to improve their stopping and turning capabilities, along with the requisite power upgrades to enhance their performance. Interiors are often extensively reconfigured to incorporate features such as central locking and powerful sound systems, components far beyond the original designers’ imagination.
And yet, despite all these updates, many of these tuning companies are reluctant to embrace the one thing that would result in significantly improved power, efficiency, and reliability: a switch to an electric motor. Thankfully, that’s changing, and two builders have created stunning examples of what’s possible when new tech meets classic style.
Creating Demand
Singer Vehicle Design is the best-known of these Porsche ultra-restoration companies. Its founder, Rob Dickinson, has flat-out said that none of his customers want EVs, so Singer isn’t interested in building them. However, Steve Jobs, rather famously, said that Apple’s customers don’t know what they want until they show it to them. Similarly, a few companies have some exceptionally fine creations to show when it comes to Porsches.
Kalmar is one of those companies. Based in Pärnu, Estonia, Kalmar has developed a range of wild 911-based machines, including an upcoming, 930-horsepower car called the 9×9. Jan Kalmar, founder of the company and a former Porsche engineer himself, said that the upcoming machine will be a “retro hypercar.”
But even Kalmar’s more mainstream machines are hardly commonplace. The company only builds about a dozen cars a year, most of them a model called the 7-97. It’s a restored and upgraded Porsche 911 of the 964 generation, originally produced from the late ’80s to the early ’90s. 964 one of the most desirable generations of the iconic rear-engined, teardrop-shaped sports car.
Kalmar strips down and rebuilds each one, slotting in more powerful gas-burning engines with handling and brake upgrades to match, all wrapped in an extensively refined, composite bodywork. Ask nicely, though, and you can get something a little different: the 7-97 E-Volt.
Though carrying much the same shape as the company’s other 7-97 models, the E-Volt is fundamentally different. It is, of course, electric, but there’s a lot more to it than that.
It starts with the body. Beneath that appropriately evergreen surface lies not aluminum, steel, or even carbon fiber. The bodywork is made of plants, a composite surface of natural flax fibers, to be specific.
The glass, too, is eco-friendly, recycled from the original car’s. Even the upholstery is locally sourced. “That leather on the seats is from the hides of the cows walking next to the track,” Kalmar said, referencing the company’s test facility. “So, we didn’t have to move it so far.”
But none of that would matter if the car weren’t worth driving, and Kalmar saw to it that it would hold up that end of the equation, too. It delivers 414 horsepower to the rear wheels from its electric motor, and weighs just over 3,000 pounds, far more powerful yet roughly the same weight as an original Porsche 911 of the 964 era.
Royal Inspiration
Everrati is another company rapidly making a name for itself on the restomod scene. But, where the 7-97 E-Volt is a one-off EV among a close-knit family of internal combustion machines, Everrati is all-in on electrification.
Everrati founder and CEO Justin Lunny was inspired to start a company focusing on electrified restorations of iconic cars thanks to an unlikely event: The 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The pair drove away in a Jaguar E-Type that had been converted to be fully electric. “So that kind of gave me the inspiration,” Lunny said.
He started research on the company soon after, pivoting success in the world of fintech into a project to create classic cars that can not only be enjoyed in modern times, but that take advantage of everything modern technology has to offer.
Everrati offers a range of different models, including vintage Land Rovers and classic Pagoda-era Mercedes-Benz SLs, all modified to contain between 62 and 68 kilowatt-hours of battery pack—roughly two-thirds the size of the pack in a Tesla Model S. But it’s the company’s 911 that truly caught my eye.
It, too, is a 964-generation Porsche 911 that’s been painstakingly disassembled and retrofitted with everything needed to be compatible with an electric powertrain. Lunny said that the cars are thoroughly updated so that every component is up to the demands of the much more powerful electric drivetrain (500 hp). Still, his designers go out of their way to avoid doing any irreparable harm to the chassis.
“Things like the Pagoda, the classic Porsche, they’re never going to be made again,” Lunny said. Everrati’s goal is to “offer future generations the ability to really enjoy these cars in a way that doesn’t ruin them.”
Electrified Inheritance
Like Kalmar’s machines, each Everrati is a custom commission. The one pictured here was built for Steve Rimmer, founder of the Dirtfish rally school in Washington state, and a man with a pretty epic collection of cars.
“He was actually building this car with us, partly for his kids,” Lunny said. Many of Everrati’s commissions are created with the next generation in mind—at least ostensibly. “I mean, it’s like buying a Patek, isn’t it? You claim it for your child,” Lunny said.
It’s a similar story that led to the creation of the Kalmar 7-97 E-Volt. Jan Kalmar said that a client ordered a 7-97, but called in the next day to cancel after his wife and daughter found out it wasn’t electric.
Instead of canceling the order, Kalmar said he’d figure out how to make an electric 7-97. “And then we went really crazy with that,” he said, resulting in the E-Volt.
That first car, then, was created to fit a specific need, but Kalmar said that there sadly hasn’t been demand for more: “There have been plenty of inquiries, but no sales.” He told me he believes in EV technology, particularly when it comes to commercial and industrial use, but isn’t sure it’s ready for consumer cars.
“On diesel, you use about 38 percent of the energy in the diesel, and in fuel, it’s 32. But on electric, it’s like 96, 97, so of course it makes sense from an energy standpoint,” Kalmar said. But, for sports cars like the 911, Kalmar said combustion is still the future: “As Mr. Porsche said many years ago, the last car that will ever be produced will be a sports car.”
Everrati’s Lunny, however, is more bullish about electrification’s place in this world of reimagined classics. “Our cars are genuinely far better to drive than their original counterparts, far more usable and, in many ways, far more engaging,” he said.
Kalmar will build you your own 7-97 E-Volt should you be interested, at a cost starting around $500,000. Everrati’s 911 builds start closer to $450,000, but you need to source your own 964-generation 911 to start. Everrati doesn’t sell completed cars, rather provides bespoke components and facilitates their installation at a series of trusted shops around the world.
Regardless of which you choose, you’ll be waiting about a year to get the completed machine. “Bespoke takes time,” Lunny said.
