Buried under layers of dust, forgotten ladders and decades of neglect in an old CBD warehouse, a rusty 1957 Karmann Ghia sat waiting. Most people walked past without a second glance. But Chloe Stuart is not most people.
Where others see scrap metal, the 16-year-old racing driver sees a second chance. That instinct – to look at something broken and imagine it whole again – is the engine driving her unusual double life.
By day, she’s a history-making Formula Vee champion. By any other hour, she’s the teenager bringing forgotten classics back from the dead, one restoration at a time.
Classic Cars by Chloe soft-launched in 2024, but the idea took root much earlier. Motor racing is expensive – eye-wateringly so. Chloe and her father needed a way to fund her career without being chained to a traditional nine-to-five. Between training sessions, coaching, media commitments and race weekends, flexibility isn’t a luxury. It’s survival.
“Money doesn’t grow on trees, but you can absolutely earn an income that works around your racing life,” Chloe puts it bluntly.
The business model is unusual. Cars can be sold at any stage of restoration. She is also exploring project shares – giving supporters the chance to invest in a build and share in the returns. Profit takes time, she will be the first to admit. But as she sees it, the best things in life rarely go to those who brake early.
The Ferrari moment
The turning point came during a training session at Pablo Clark Racing. There, mid-restoration, sat a Ferrari 250. Chloe came face to face with it and never quite recovered.
That encounter shaped everything that followed. Start with entry-level classics, she decided. Learn the expensive lessons on cars that won’t break the bank. Then work your way up to the machines that take your breath away.
Her current project list reads like a petrolhead’s fever dream. A BMW 633CSi – one of only around 34 left-hand-drive examples ever brought to South Africa, now a flagship collector’s piece. A BMW E30 Coupe being stripped raw for the BMW M-Performance Parts Racing Series, designed as the ultimate no-aids training car. A Rover P4 90 Series being coaxed back from the brink.
And then there is the LemonGhia – a second Karmann Ghia shell found in that same Joburg warehouse. This one is destined for something entirely different: a rust-clear, Nissan-engined endurance racer for budget series like iLamuna. It will look like nothing else on a race track. That is precisely the point.
The crew behind the magic
No teenager builds classic cars alone. Behind every restoration is a skilled team. Jean-Louis Maraz, the official Clerk of the Course at Zwartkops Raceway, ensures every car is built legal and safe. Christiaan van Schalkwyk handles bodywork and mechanicals. Wayne Jacobs of Extreme Detailing makes sure every car arrives and leaves looking its absolute best.
Between them, they turn Chloe’s visions into rolling, roaring reality.
More than just a pretty restoration
The racing results, meanwhile, speak for themselves. In June 2024 at Zwartkops Raceway, a clutch failure sidelined Chloe before the first race, but she returned in the afternoon to deliver a formidable 14th-place finish in the second race .
By May 2025, she was dominating. Competing in Class F of the BMW M-Performance Parts Race Series, she qualified second in class and then won both heats at Zwartkops – carving out an astonishing winning margin of nearly 50 seconds in Race 1. She was named Driver of the Day .
Just weeks later at Red Star Raceway, her pace was so strong in practice that she was automatically promoted from Class F to the faster, more competitive Class E. She finished eighth in her first outing against more experienced rivals .
But the crowning achievement came in February 2026, when Chloe made history as the youngest female Formula Vee champion in more than 50 years – and the first woman to claim the title in half a century .
She also became the first woman to win a BMW M-Performance race in Class F, earning rapid promotion to Class E and then Class D .
Big breaks and bigger plans
The attention is rolling in. Chloe is preparing to launch Racer Girl, her first fragrance. She has been personally welcomed into the Historic Tour, with organisers thrilled to have a young woman shaking up the classic racing space.
Next on her radar: restoring one of the iconic old BP Nissan Primera Historic Touring Cars. It is a project waiting for the right funding partner to come along for the ride.
Back in that Joburg warehouse, the Karmann Ghia sits waiting. To most people, it is still just a rusty shell. To Chloe Stuart, it is a reminder that potential is everywhere – you just have to know where to look.
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