I'm Sam. I grew up tinkering in my dad's basement workshop, taking things apart to see why they worked — and usually putting them back together with extra holes. That habit turned into a degree in Automotive Engineering at HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem, where I specialized in combustion engines, powertrains, and structural design. Today I'm based in Sweden, finishing a Master's in Sustainable Energy Engineering at LTH in Lund, while also running Retroneering.
The studio started with a Renault R4. A university team and I prepped one for a rally across the Sahara. I was both driver and engineer. We built an FIA-approved roll cage from scratch, redesigned the exhaust, reinforced the chassis, and recalibrated the drivetrain for desert punishment. That car taught me more than any lecture hall — how to measure a bellhousing bolt pattern by hand, how to simulate chassis deflection before welding a single tube, and how to source a part that hasn't existed since 1984.
That experience became a pattern. I now own a fully restored R4 retrofitted with an Alpine turbo engine, a standalone ECU running injection and ignition control, and a lot of custom fabrication. My daily driver is a 1999 Toyota Picnic — also slowly running out of factory parts. When the molded bumper brackets disappeared from every catalog, I measured, modelled, and produced my own. Same story as the classics, just fewer Instagram posts about it.
Before Retroneering, I worked for a classic car parts reseller, redesigning out-of-production components at scale — from first prototype to full production runs. I dealt directly with manufacturers, managed tooling conversations, and learned which tolerances matter on a drawing and which ones just inflate the quote.
Modern manufacturing economics don't favor low-volume, irregular metal shapes from forty years ago. Tooling gets scrapped, drawings get lost, and the engineers who knew why that rib was there have retired. What remains is a growing gap between the cars people want to keep and the parts needed to keep them moving.
Retroneering exists to close that gap — one component at a time, with the same precision standards that built the originals, documented well enough that the work never has to be done twice.
Primary CAD platform is SolidWorks, backed by ANSYS for CFD and structural simulation. Metrology includes a granite flatness plate with a digital height gauge, precision calipers, radius gauges, and a calibrated flatbed scanner with custom unwarp scripts for 2D profile capture. A handheld structured-light scanner is on the roadmap — but until then, the stack of analog tools and the flatbed get the job done to ±0.05 mm.
Drawings are delivered in whatever format your machinist prefers — PDF, DWG, STEP, or native SolidWorks files with full feature trees, depending on the agreement.
Most projects start with an email and a few photos. From there, we determine whether the part can be captured remotely, shipped for precision measurement, or scanned on-site. Turnaround ranges from two weeks for simple brackets to eight weeks for complex castings or assemblies requiring simulation.
Parts engineered here have already shipped to owners and workshops in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, and Cyprus. The goal is EU-wide coverage, with hubs in Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.
Beyond CAD, I have hands-on experience with welding, lathing, milling, laser and waterjet cutting, vacuum thermoforming, 3D printing, aluminum sand casting, fiberglass and carbon composite molding, and rubber injection molding. That matters because a drawing that ignores how a part will actually be made is just a pretty picture.