Is the Kimera EVO37 the best restomod yet?

Why scintillating? Five hundred supercharged horses (505PS, 377kW) in a machine weighing 1,000kg should ensure that, living up to the cult car’s place in the history books as the last solely rear-driven car ever to win the World Rally Championship.

Officially, it’s the Kimera Automobili EVO37 but as the pictures will already have told you, it’s a dead ringer for Lancia’s famous rally machine – just add in your mind’s eye the famous striped Martini livery for the full 1980s effect.

The modern-day interpretation hails from Cuneo, south of Turin, and a team of motorsport professionals and former rally drivers that includes Miki Biasion, two-time World Rally champion in the 1980s with Lancia.

The idea behind the car sticks rigidly to the restomod (restored and modified) principle: take an iconic car and bring it up to date as only modern materials – carbon, Kevlar, titanium – and modern techniques like 3D scanning, CAD and CNC milling can. For Kimera, the result is a faithful but now very hi-tech road car with lots of Italian craftsmanship and everyday usability.

As it was for Lancia with the 037 in 1983, the starting point is a donor car in the form of a Lancia Beta Montecarlo, the pretty Pininfarina-designed two-seat mid-engined coupe of the day. Instantly recognisable with its quad round headlights (now LEDs), wheelarch blisters and, most memorably, that severe flick of its upturned tail, the body stays true to the original with some differences (wider track and shorter overhangs primarily) and now all made in carbon-fibre.

Underneath is the Montecarlo’s monocoque passenger cell supplemented by a new tubular structure for strength and for somewhere from which to hang the redesigned suspension and braking systems. The engine is the same 2.1-litre four-cylinder as the rally car, mounted longitudinally behind the seats. It uses an original block but all else is redesigned and boasts a turbocharger as well the original’s Volumex supercharger.

There’s a choice of sequential or six-speed manual gearbox with the 505PS and 550Nm of torque – far more than the rally cars had in period – all sent to the 19-inch rear wheels. So who needs four-wheel-drive anyway? Markku Allen and Walter Röhrl didn’t… There aren’t any performance figures so far available but with an all-up weight around 1,000kg, you don’t have to be Miki Biasion to see that it’s going to be quick. 

It’s also going to be Italian to its wheelnuts, Kimera chief executive Luca Betti drawing on the supercar heritage and  resources in and around Turin to make the EVO37. Some of the people in the project were actually involved in making the real thing in 1982, while Kimera itself has a history of restoring and building the original 037 in both Group B and Stradali forms.

Torinese craftsmanship promises to be to the fore in the leather and Alcantara trimmed cabin. The EVO37 maintains the same dashboard and central tunnel structure as the Lancia 037, keeping the 1980s feel, but rendered in visible carbon-fibre.  All the dials are in-period analogue, and there’s even that rally driving essential: a hydraulic handbrake.  The seats are based on those in the Delta S4.

Kimera says it is going to make 37 of them as a numbered series, with the first scheduled to arrive a couple of months after the EVO37 makes its debut at Goodwood in July. There is no price quoted but there are lots of personalisation options available including a wide range of body colours.

And, before you ask, yes there is an option to have it in Martini livery…