These Vintage Warbirds Pair Modern Tech With Classic Flair

The sentimental weight of military legacy has boosted the profile of former WWII warbirds to the point where many being restored are worth millions. “Even if the World War II veteran is gone, their children have the pictures and logbook,” says Mark Clark, owner of Courtesy Aircraft, which specializes in WWII warbirds. “These pilots and their aircraft performed an invaluable service.” There’s also the allure of flying an historic warbird. “They enjoy a Packard Merlin V12 engine with 1,300 horsepower firing up, and the short stack going pop, pop, pop.”

The trick is how to modernize them without losing the original character. The restomod concept is old hat in classic cars: restore a vintage model according to its original styling and overall character, but updated with modern power, performance, and safety features. The approach is cloudier when it comes to some of aviation’s warbirds from the middle of the past century—at least as far as staying true to their backstories. 

“Aircraft have more restrictions than a car,” says Simon Brown, co-owner and president of California-based Platinum Fighter Sales, specializing in World War II aircraft. “You can’t just cut three feet off the wings for a new look. It needs to be safe and airworthy. Most people follow the manufacturer’s design.” 

Firms like Paul Bazeley’s Aerometal International, LLC effectively turn 80-year-old vintage aircraft into airborne restomods with modern equipment. “We’re doing things that have never been done with these planes,” he says, “seeking FAA approval and working with manufacturers to install the very highest standards of navigation, situational awareness, and communications hardware.” His team also brings comfort to old aircraft by installing temperature control systems while upgrading interiors with lightweight, fire-resistant materials. But, even with the modern avionics and communications, most owners attempt to restore the aircraft’s original wardbird look.

The P-51 Mustang, for example, is a highly sought-after fighter, thanks to its crucial role in both the European and the Pacific theaters of operations and, just as importantly, for the abundance of available spare parts. Brown says many owners “spend hundreds of thousands, even millions, so it looks like it just came from the factory—the more authentic, the more valuable.” 

That wasn’t always the case. In the early postwar period, with hundreds of P-51s no longer needed, the government sold them for as little as $1,000. They were snapped up by civilian pilots, often for the air-race circuits sweeping the country at the time. The first aviation-restomod craze was at full throttle, with bare-aluminum fuselages garishly painted to identify racers, engines tweaked for bolstered output, and wings faired to improve aerodynamics. “Mustangs were the stars,” says Eric Trueblood, senior vice president of Air Corps Aviation, a warbird-restoration house in Minnesota, adding that “they were modified to be as fast as possible.” 

Starting in the late 1980s, though, a new generation of owners began placing a premium on original military liveries and specs—causing prices for meticulously restored versions to take off—while looking down on restomods as depreciating machines for mavericks. 

“The value of my airplane lies in its history as an air racer,” says Vicky Benzing, whose purple-hued Plum Crazy started racing in 1964 but sat idle for years before she returned it to mint condition to campaign it herself. Other P-51 competitors have gotten more extreme modifications, such as Voodoo, which has reshaped wings to increase top speed; in 2017 it became the world’s fastest piston-engine aircraft, reaching 554.69 mph. The even more heavily modified P-51 Bardahl Special has an experimental race engine that produces 3,000 hp—twice as much as the stock Merlin. 

Interestingly, Air Corps Aviation is seeing more warbird examples that had motorsport provenances before being conscripted into military guise now getting a civilian (re-)makeover. The firm recently restored Thunderbird, a P-51C once owned by actor Jimmy Stewart, to air-race condition, which, along with significant structural modifications, included 48 coats of primer and a cobalt-blue topcoat. “It was one of the most recognizable P-51s of its day,” says Trueblood of the fighter’s peacetime persona. “Sometimes it’s about honoring the aircraft’s history instead of creating a new narrative.”

Sidebar: The Past Takes Wing

Although decades of innovation have made flying easier than ever, a cultish minority still finds solace in the visceral world of analog aircraft. Venture capitalist Phillip Sarofim, for one, fully embraces the allure of his “flying time machine,” a 1951 Grumman HU-16 Albatross. “Historical aircraft are pure,” he says, “bringing us back to the days when aviation was awe-inspiring.” 

Beyond the retro aesthetics of such planes, it’s their mechanical cockpits—sans elaborate electronics suites—and at times archaic configurations that some enthusiasts find so compelling. Take the pilots committed to taildraggers, which steer by a rear-mounted wheel during taxi. William “Tiki Tom” Gibson, who flies a 1941 Stearman biplane, says taildraggers “tend to be more maneuverable and fun to fly, but more difficult on the ground. It’s kind of like driving a tricycle backwards.” 

Julie De Stefano loves the idiosyncrasies of her taildragger, a 1958 American Champion 7FC named Daisy. “The more I worked at it, the more the airplane felt like a shirt,” says De Stefano of how comfortable behind the yoke she is now. Her ideal flight? A low-altitude trip over Florida’s Gulf of Mexico where she can watch tarpon in the waters below, then land on a grass strip and picnic under the wing. 

The intimate engagement that analog aviation affords is akin to riding a classic Brough Superior motorcycle as opposed to the latest Ducati superbike: The pace is slower, your personal control greater, and the experience likely to be more profound. “I like Amelia Earhart’s quote, ‘You haven’t seen the shadow of a tree unless you’ve seen it from the air,’ ” De Stefano says. “It’s on point with the kind of flying I love.”