The first instalment of a new series following Alasdair Stables and his Retropower built Chevette HSR as they compete in the Motorsport News Circuit Championship. First up, an eventful visit to Cadwell Park Motorsport, as the old adage goes, is a risky business, and while the threat to life and limb...
The Millington Diamond serves as a litmus test for the British and Irish club motorsport scene. To put it bluntly, if you’ve never spent a wet Sunday stood in a Welsh forest or windswept airfield circuit denoted by an increasingly ragged assortment of cones, there’s every chance that the name...
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a full 4 months since we began work on Project Utah, our plan to turn the already lovely Mk2 Jaguar into something altogether sleeker, slipperier and unique. You can read more about the aero-focussed concept underpinning Project Utah here and here, but...
We’re firm believers in the ability of wheels to either make or break a project car, something which applies to automotive builds of all types, scales and budgets. The correct set of carefully selected wheels can either be the cherry atop a long time, all-or-nothing project…or can effectively be the...
Ah, Goodwood. Other British circuits might have hosted a greater number of Grand Prixs and be better known by the average man or woman in the street, but few other bastions of motorsport heritage can claim to be as spectacular or as steeped in sporting history. This pretty, innocuous looking...
It's always interesting to see which Retropower projects attract the most attention, both in person and online. OK, so some cars are all but certain to cause a furore from the moment they break cover (Gordon Murray Escort, we're looking your way...
The venerable Vauxhall C20XE, or the ‘Redtop’ to its friends, has been a cornerstone of the European tuning scene for decades now, and this despite it having long ago been supplanted by more powerful and more technically advanced twin cams. Not only has the ‘Redtop’ powered pretty much any car...
We're approaching the end of the Lancia Stratos project, and while there's still a lot of work still to do before the car is ready to leave Retropower, we thought it an ideal time to take stock, to see what we've achieved...
While no Retropower project is the same, it’s probably fair to say that many are built along similar lines, at least in terms of how the individual commissioning them intends on driving them once complete. Case in point, the Murray Escort and the Greetham Imp – the two are wildly...
The enduring popularity of builds like the Murray Mk1 Escort and the Stratos ‘Zero’ mean that it’s easy to see why Retropower is best known for powerful, highly modified projects. Projects of this kind tend to grab the attention of petrolheasds of all creeds, not to mention garner impressive social...
One of a pair of Range Rover Classics currently owned by the Retropower staff, Nat’s build has stepped up a gear in recent weeks with the addition of its new engine, a Mercedes OM606 diesel. Now, for the uninitiated this might seem like a slightly strange choice, particularly when you...
We've talked before about the cars we'd build given the time, space and unlimited financial muscle (click through to give it a read if you've yet to), so now it's time to come back down to earth by looking at the stuff we're currently driving, building...
The NSU Ro80 is one of those classic cars that every petrolhead knows for one reason and one reason alone, its Wankel engine. NSU were actually the first car firm to mass produce a rotary engine of this design, paving the way for Mazda, Citroen and several other pioneers. It’s...
You would've had to have been living under an especially large, especially dense slab of rock to have been unaware of our latest project, a Mk1 Escort for the one and only Gordon Murray. Y'know, the genius engineer behind the Brabham 'Fan Car,' the McLaren MP4/4 and a little known...
The Opel Ascona and Manta you see here are proof that motorsport success isn’t always the arbiter of popularity, especially when it comes to those models rallied under the World Rally Championship’s Group 4 and Group B eras. While the Ascona found championship success with one Walter Rohrl at the...
We’ve been working on retro cars for almost ten years now, long enough to have tackled all manner of builds on an immense variety of different models. All have posed their challenges, and it really doesn’t matter whether the build in question is a traditional restoration or a ‘restomod’ undertaking...
The original Golf GTI is one of those cars that crosses divides, classes and cultures; it doesn't matter where you're from, how old you are or how much you have in the bank, it's a brilliant car to look at, sit in and drive. It was also among the first...
We build cars for customers, single-minded petrolheads with a love for old school machines with custom touches and one-off engineering. It's what we've been doing for the best part of a decade and what gets us up in the morning, but it can sometimes have a useful (and certainly appreciated...
If there's one thing you should know about Retropower by now, it's that fitting any engine into a any car is something we take in our stride, largely as it's a task we've been asked to carry out multiple times over the last 9 years. Of course the scale of...
It's taken well over two years, has caused us to scour vast swathes of Germany in a frantic search for OEM pieces of trim and has consistently taken up a disproportionately vast portion of the workshop, but the Mercedes W116 S-Class is slated to leave Retropower in the coming weeks....