I was about four years old when I first laid eyes on a Peugeot 205: an Alpine White 1.9-litre GTi.

Even then I knew it was special, and its clean-cut, Pininfarina-penned lines etched themselves onto my brain as the genesis of what would become my hot hatch infatuation.

Later, I was shuttled to and from school in one, and 20 years on it’s still part of the family, albeit currently residing under a sheet and in a very sorry state of affairs.

But while the 205 was pleasing to the eye and rewarding to drive, it was also a rather tricky hot hatch to tame. Not only that, but it was prone to being struck down by various engine issues, too (go on, ask me how I know).

You can imagine my excitement, then, when Warwickshire firm Tolman Engineering took Peugeot’s seminal ’80s hot hatchback and reworked, fettled and fine-tuned it into the car it was always destined to be.

The Tolman Edition 205 GTi is on the face of it a restomod, although in many ways it doesn’t quite fit the brief. A vast number of restomodders seem hell-bent on making astronomically priced, highly exclusive collectibles that are a far cry from the original car.

But even if I’m after an improved version of a classic car – with modern technology added here and there – I still want it to retain the spirit of the original. And that is exactly what Tolman has achieved with its 205.

When it took part in Britain’s Best Driver’s Car 2023, the Tolman GTi struck a chord with our testers for its engaging drive on the road and its playful nature on track.

With its reworked engine and trick differential, it was as fun to punt around Anglesey as the eventual winner of the contest, the Lamborghini Huracán Sterrato.

What I also love about Tolman’s 205 is the balance of old and new: glance at the instrument cluster and you’ll assume they’re the original Veglia items, but they are in fact digital recreations that swap to T16-style dials when you switch the car to Sport mode. Very neat. 

This is the sort of sympathetic attention to detail enthusiasts crave from a restomod. The price for such a capable and usefully modernised machine?

Well, there’s no easy way of saying it: £60,000, or double that for a fully loaded example.

So yes, it’s pricey, if not astronomically so, but then this is a car that is put together by a company that used to run its own team in the British GT Championship and which has an excellent reputation for restoring historic racing cars.

Tolman also restores Lotuses, and it has churned out modified versions of the Sunbeam Lotus and, more recently, a Ford Escort XR3i.

Tolman is clearly on a mission to become a bigger player in the restomod game, and it has every right to be ambitious.

No longer do we have to lament wistfully that “they don’t make ’em like that any more”, because Tolman does. In fact, it makes ’em even better.