The latest company to throw its hat into the restomodding ring is the U.K.’s Caton, a newly formed company that aims to sympathetically renew classic vehicles and evolve them for the modern age. To do that, it is teaming up with industry experts Envisage Group. The group may not be known to you and me, but as a supplier for luxury automakers, it is renowned within the industry. The group has long worked on production vehicles as well as on smaller projects to create continuation cars, so it is uniquely placed to work with Caton on this project.
Together, the twi companies will work to
make enhancements to iconic products with an emphasis on restraint. Caton says
it will be guided by the question, “What would the original creators have done
had they had the latest technology and manufacturing methods at their
disposal?”
For its first project, the new company
will take on an iconic two-seater British sports car from the 1950s. To start
the project, it created a full digital model of the car’s body and will use
ultra-accurate CNC machines to create tooling that will enable it to operate at
tolerances of 0.2mm. It’s not all newfangled whizzbangery, though, the team
will also employ the old-fashioned English Wheel to hand form aluminum panels
for the vehicle.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until
Caton’s first project makes its debut at the Salon Privé London, which runs
from April 21 to 23, before we find out more about this reimagination of a ’50s
icon. The company does say, though, that the car has been subtly evolved to
make it more user-friendly, more performant, and more modern while adhering
rigidly to its DNA.
