The guy wants an original look and he’s having you make a carbon hood?
That doesn’t even make sense when you say it out loud.
The whole thing is custom really… You’re making molds even. To just mold the back side to have a copy of the original in looks only then why not just the back with a single ply and bond it in. THe skin itself should be rigid enough. Airplanes are skins like this and they’re three plys and a core. If you use some foam core and do stringers across the center and then around the edge it should be plenty rigid. And if you design it right you should be able to use the original mount holes. If you pot in or layup a fastener in the laminate it’ll be bolt in. There was another thread ongoing talking about these interlaminate fasteners.