Restomods are the hottest commodity in the automotive world right now, and with the world revolving around money, it’s no wonder they’re literally everywhere – remember Singer? Or the electric VW Kombi Bus? Or the Volvo P1800 Cyan?
It’s reached a point where the market is so saturated, that whenever we see one, we just go: “oh, yet another restomod”. But every once in a while, something so special comes about that we just can’t stop staring at it – like this, the Kimera Automobili EVO37.
As the name suggests (if you’re a diehard motorsports nerd like us, anyway), the EVO37 is a modern reinterpretation of the Lancia 037, which in itself is a very special Lancia Rally 037 homologation special from the Group B era.
For the EVO37, Kimera wanted to “maintain the essence and the soul of the old car by evolving it without upsetting it”, and what other way to do it than recruiting a bunch of people involved with the original Lancia project?
Kimera’s founder Luca Betti himself, is a former rally driver who’s driven both in the WRC and the European Rally Championship. The development of the EVO37’s engine is headed by Claudio Lombardi, the man responsible for much of the powerplants from Lancia’s motorsport glory days.
Miki Biasion, who drove the actual 037 rally car, and later won two World Rally Championships with the Delta Integrale, is also involved in the development of the EVO37. So in other words, this is pretty much the closest you can possibly get to the 037.
Everything about the EVO37 is reverse-engineered from the OG rally car to preserve its original charm, though with tasteful amounts of modern technologies to bring it up to today’s performance standards. Take for example the chassis, which – just like the original car – is based off the central cell of a Beta Montecarlo.
To this, Kimera added two “self-supporting” tubular subframes, which the company says increases the torsional rigidity while remaining faithful to the original design. Just like the original homologation car, there are still four(!) dampers hanging off of the rear section – two on each side – but this time, using high-performance parts supplied by Ohlins.
The engine is based on the old inline-four block, but reengineered with wider piston bores to increase its displacement up to 2.1-litre (vs 2.0-litre). The engine also now gets a new turbocharger and supercharger set-up inherited from the 037’s successor, the Delta S4, which boosts the output up to 505 hp and 550 Nm of torque.
The same recipe is also applied to the brakes, which are now Brembo items, and also the retro-styled wheels, which are now wrapped with modern-day Pirelli P-Zero tyres.
And finally, all of that is wrapped under a new body shell, 3D scanned and reverse-engineered from the original fibreglass panels. Only this time, it’s made of carbon fibre, paired to other lightweight materials such as titanium and kevlar.
In the interest of modernising the car, the Kimera EVO37 gets new LED illumination on both ends – the former still with the iconic quad headlights set-up – along with a few minor dimension tweaks to add a touch of aggression and presumably, improve aerodynamics. Still, it doesn’t stray too far off the original car – Kimera wouldn’t want to, anyway, not with their whole “preserving the soul” speech.
The company plans to build 37 of these (see what they did there?), and if you’re looking at getting one, be prepared to fork out EUR480,000 (~MYR2.4 mil) at minimum. That’s a lot of money, but then again, it’s probably still a lot cheaper than what the original homologation 037 costs in auction.
On top of that, it’ll probably be a lot better to drive with all the new modern performance parts, not that you’ll ever want to drive the original – if you have one to begin with.
GALLERY
