PEUGEOT 205GTI "EVO"

The iconic Peugeot 1.9 205 GTi defined the classic “hot hatch” era. Tolman Engineering have now brought the experience bang up to date in our own distictive and subtle way to create the Tolman Edition Evo.

When our client first approached us after seeing our first 205 build, the idea was to build the ultimate hot hatch for the modern driver. We started with a decent donor car - though condition wasn’t important at this stage - and took it back to bare metal, repairing the body shell where necessary and making it “as new” before the application of underbody weatherproofing and a fresh coat of paint in the original colour, mirror finished perfection as you would expect!

Thorough soundproofing is applied to the interior before the installation of a new wiring harness and mountings for the new in car entertainment package to ensure a stealthy fitment. seats are stripped down, frames rebuilt and coated, new foams, all wrapped up in brand new original specification upholstery. Once installed, the dashboard is equipped with a brand new digital dash screen, giving the ability to make it to tune the look of the display to our own needs and to give far greater functionality to the traditional dial set. The subtlety here is that you would have to look very closely to spot the difference at a glance.

All suspension is refreshed, the rear beam being built to our own specification, the front with our own adjustable wishbones, our own spec Bilstein damping all around. A specially developed “Tolman” braking package from AP Racing provides the stopping. All of this is complimented by a set of new Michelins which have proved to be the best all around road tyre for these cars.

The engine bay is very special indeed, and like the rest of the car, it is all built “in house”. Giving a capacity of 1.9 litres, and equipped with a 16 valve twin cam head, the very latest engine management and our own power steering set up, it is all designed to look and behave like a factory build. This also involved developing our very own stainless exhaust system which retains the sound, look, and character of an original, but with a significant uplift in performance. The addition of a Quaife limited slip differential was necessary to keep it all under control.

After weeks of work on the mapping and fine tuning the package, it was decided to settle on around 200bhp and a wide torque band to retain easy road drivability and efficiency with very accessable fun, more of which is available after pressing the “sport” button! Of course all of this is tunable to the client’s tastes.

There is so much more to this build, and endless other options are available. There will now be a limited run of Tolman Edition 205’s built, each to the clients exacting specifications and with all of our usual non invasive changes and attention to detail.