Chau Nguyen of Vintage Modern on Building Past the Restomod

Chau Nguyen is the founder and CEO of Vintage Modern, an Atlanta company that builds classic trucks you can drive every day. It started as a restomod shop for old Ford Broncos. Today it builds a classic-looking body on a modern chassis, with modern safety features, and ships one somewhere in the world every day.

He brought the company’s demo truck, a one-of-one in Arcadian Blue, to The Ride Lounge. Throttlecast hosts Grant Brewer and Dave Codrea talked with him about the old Bronco that started it all, why a restomod wasn’t enough, and what it takes to build 900-hour trucks on a schedule.

An old Bronco and a ruined date night

Chau grew up with no money and loved cars anyway. His plan was simple: be successful, make money, buy cars. He came from technology, building mobile apps, and it worked. He has owned more than 50 cars since he was 21.

The car he wanted since high school was an old Bronco. In 2017 he bought one, a 1970 in Grabber Blue. It spent more time in the shop than on the road. It leaked on his new tile garage floor and made the whole house smell like gas.

The breaking point was a date night. The ride was harsh, the steering was loose, and when they arrived his wife was smelling her hair and her dress. She told him she was done, and that he had to get rid of it. He loved his wife, and he loved the Bronco. So he decided to make it better.

He sold that first truck, missed it, and bought three more without telling her. From there it went from fixing his own car, to a side business, to all in. “I was just trying to fix my old car,” he says.

What a restomod is, and where it stops

Chau lays out three stages. Restoration puts an old car back the way it was, with matching numbers and original parts. A restomod, short for modern or modified restoration, keeps the classic look and replaces the parts with new ones. It became the hot thing because the market changed.

The buyers who grew up wrenching on cars with their dads were aging out. The new buyers, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, grew up with cars that start every time. Being stuck on the side of the road is a non-starter for them. Chau counts himself in that group. He loves cars and has no time or desire to fix them.

Vintage Modern built more than 150 restomods, and they were beautiful. But even the best restomod has limits. It still has a short wheelbase, a narrow track, old geometry, and solid axles. Chau compares it to remodeling a house from the 1920s. At some point you have to knock it down.

The bigger problem was safety. A restomod can have all-new parts and still have no crumple zones and no airbags. He remembers delivering one to LeBron James in Akron and telling him to drive it carefully, because it wasn’t his Range Rover. Almost half of Vintage Modern’s customers had become women with kids, driving these trucks through the carpool line. Every time his own family drove one, he worried.

His summary: “Restoration good, restomod better, but a fully modernized classic to the person that wants everything with no compromises, that is the best.”

Betting the company on a modern chassis

Customers told him the same thing. They loved the fit, finish, and service, but they wanted it to drive like their G-Wagen or Range Rover, and above all they wanted safety features. You can stretch an old chassis to make it drive better. You can’t retrofit modern safety into it.

So Vintage Modern flipped the process. “Maybe what our customers actually want is not a classic car,” Chau says. “They want a classic looking car.” Instead of making an old truck more modern, they started with a modern truck and built a classic on top of it.

It was a big bet. The company was doing well, with a healthy queue of restomod builds that had stacked up during COVID. Chau bet it all anyway. It went from an idea to a prototype in 18 months, and to production 90 days after that, in early 2024. At recording they had just shipped number 260.

The demo truck shows the result. It’s built on a 2025 Ford chassis with a longer wheelbase, wider track, and independent front suspension. It has crumple zones, six airbags, side impact beams, traction control, and anti-lock brakes. The steel body is all new, stamped in Detroit with tooling Vintage Modern owns. Like each month’s one-of-one build, it will never be made again, and it was for sale.

900 hours, one truck a day

Every truck takes 900 hours of handcrafted labor in Atlanta. The factory in North Atlanta runs on standard operating procedures for every step, down to final detail, and on takt time. Every day they start one truck and ship one truck. That’s how they can promise a delivery for a specific birthday and hit it.

Chau breaks the business into three parts: people, process, and parts. None of them is right at the start. You fix them by building over and over at a volume big enough to matter. Consultants from Detroit toured the factory and called it elite. They also told him the team does work that adds no value, like chasing zero defects on panels where big automakers allow a set number.

Warranty with no invoice

Chau has owned enough exotic cars to know what bad service feels like: waiting weeks for a service slot, driving 45 minutes to the dealer, and arguing about coverage. So Vintage Modern covers everything bumper to bumper. Each customer gets one concierge contact who answers on nights and weekends. If a problem can’t be fixed remotely, the company’s own traveling technicians fly to the customer’s driveway, usually within two or three days. They have never charged a customer for warranty work, even when a warranty had expired.

Built on social media

The company officially started in 2019 as Vintage Broncos, and social media made it. Chau started with zero followers, just taking photos and video of a truck he thought was beautiful. His kids, about 8 and 10 at the time, taught him how to use Instagram. He made the first 4,600 posts himself. Today the brand has about 4 million followers and reaches close to 100 million people a month.

As the concept caught on, it was clear it wasn’t limited to Broncos. The company dropped the Bronco name and became Vintage Modern. Sales went up, and so did the average price. Buyers willing to spend $250,000 were more comfortable spending it on a brand than on a Ford. About 95% of customers buy sight unseen, and trucks have shipped as far as the Amalfi Coast and Dubai.

Hiring people who love it

Vintage Modern had 12 people when the factory opened. It has about 140 now. Chau still meets every candidate, for every role. He tells them how hard it will be and tries to talk them out of it. In his view, culture isn’t ping pong tables and snacks. It’s a team that won’t let the wrong person stay in the building.

Rapid fire

• Next build: his next dream car. He’ll only say it’s fast, light, loud, 810 horsepower, and will come with a manual.
• Dream three-car garage: the new Lamborghini Countach, a Porsche GT3 RS because his son wants one, and one of his own builds.
• The one he regrets selling: an Electric Beam yellow Mercedes G-Wagen 4x4 Squared with every Brabus carbon fiber option.
• Manual or automatic forever: automatic, so he can multitask.

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Chau Nguyen is above and on YouTube, including the electric Bronco prototype Vintage Modern built on 12 Tesla batteries. See current builds and the configurator at Vintage Modern.

A classic that runs like a new car still deserves to be kept right. The Ride Lounge is a private car club with climate-controlled car storage in Peachtree Corners and Midtown Atlanta, where builds like this one get parked, driven, and talked about. Browse more Throttlecast episodes.