“This 80bhp Volkswagen Baja Bug is a restomod done right”
The Twisted TBug is yet another rear-engined, air-cooled resto-mod – but it’s different in all the right ways
Opinion
by Matt Prior
2 mins read
26 July 2025
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Have you seen the Twisted TBug? Twisted, the friendly, Yorkshire-based modifier of classic Land Rover Defenders (and now owner of a marine division as well), has started offering a Volkswagen Beetle Baja Bug restomod too.
(If it starts doing Hillman Imps, our respective garages will look even more alike.)
Unsurprisingly, the TBug looks somewhat nicer than my Baja Bug, because Twisted are people who are used to doing things properly. The interior looks trimmed beautifully, the stance is just so (I’m tempted to have a word with the front end of mine and a grinder) and there’s a reinforced chassis, a new engine, new electrics and LED lights that don’t look daft.
The power output has been about doubled over the original, but it’s still making less than 80bhp, so it isn’t a fast car – but that doesn’t matter a bit. “What makes the TBug special is that it makes you smile every time you slide behind the wheel,” says Twisted founder Charles Fawcett.
“In a world of increasingly serious and complex vehicles, there’s something wonderfully refreshing about that.” As they might have said in the 1970s, I can dig that.
Unlike Twisted Defenders and Suzuki Jimnys, this car exists in the ‘special projects’ bit of the company’s offerings. Lots of personalisation and customisation is on offer and it’s the sort of thing you could get lost for days in with the designers – although Twisted has made three for sale already to its thinking, in grey, green and yellow. You can spend around £95,000.
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Rather refreshingly, the TBug is a restomod that isn’t about adding silly power, keying a chassis down to the road or fitting an electric drivetrain to it. And better still, it’s one that’s based on a rear-engined, air-cooled, two-door German car but not a you-know-what.
