Tolman has restored one of the very best FWD performance cars ever built

The Honda Integra Type R is widely considered to be one of the finest front-wheel drive performance cars ever built. Which makes this particular example one of the finest of the finest, because it’s been rebigulated by noted rebigulators Tolman.

That’s the same Tolman that worked a bit of magic on the Peugeot 205 GTI a while back, and has here subjected an owner’s Integra Type R to a “sympathetic restomod”. Unsurprisingly, this owner also has a Tolman 205 GTI in the garage.

The treatment then, is less ‘shove a V6 inside a bespoke racing shell and clothe it in expensive carbon fibre panels’, and more along the lines of something you’d basically want to do to your own modern classic.

Tolman stripped the whole thing down to discover a fair bit of rust lurking underneath, so repaired and remade structural bits and stuck them on, and then future-proofed it using tonnes (not literally) of underseal. That alone took 180 hours of labour.

Then came the colour. The Integra was originally Championship White, but because said owner already owned said Tolman 205, the Honda was paint matched to that car’s ‘Sorrento Green’.

The hand-built 1.8-litre VTEC four-cylinder was rebuilt and subtly enhanced to match what it delivered the day it was made – 190bhp. Elsewhere, brake and fluid lines were replaced, the suspension was refurbished (new springs, bushes and Nitron dampers), and the wheels were refinished and shod in modern rubber.

While the rear seats were in “excellent” condition, the fronts… were not. So Tolman sourced new-old seat material from Australia to retrim them. All in, Tolman expended 740 hours (and a no doubt thoroughly enjoyable 100-mile validation run) restoring the old Japanese hero to something that’s dailyable.

“The brief started with a colour change to sit alongside the owner’s Tolman Edition 205 GTI, but once we stripped the car we could see it deserved the full job done properly,” said Chris Tolman.

“When the panels are not available you either compromise or make them yourself. We’ll never compromise, so the answer was clear. The result is a build that stays true to the Integra, is sharp to drive and can be used with confidence.”

It’s the first of four one-off customer commissions Tolman will do this year, alongside building that 205, too.