The Marcos Archive
From an aircraft engineer's workshop in 1959 to the world's great motorsport circuits: six decades of distinctive, lightweight British sports cars built without compromise.
From an aircraft engineer's workshop in 1959 to the world's great motorsport circuits: six decades of distinctive, lightweight British sports cars built without compromise.
The first Marcos. Frank Costin, fresh from his work on the de Havilland Mosquito, applied aircraft aerodynamics and laminated plywood construction to a sports car for the first time. Unconventional, lightweight and shockingly fast, it set the template for every Marcos that would follow.
Drawn by Dennis and Peter Adams, the 1800 GT became the marque's first true icon: a low-slung British coupé on a laminated plywood chassis with a featherlight fibreglass body and Volvo straight-four power. The shape would define Marcos for the next 40 years.
A fibreglass monocoque sports car powered by Mini A-series running gear, sold as a kit. Engineered for road and track, the Mini Marcos punched far above its weight, taking a class finish at the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours, the only British car to do so that year.
A one-off experimental endurance racer and the first mid-engined Marcos. The Mantis XP was Marcos at its most ambitious: a Goodwood crowd-stopper whose silhouette would echo through everything the company built afterwards.
A bold 2+2 grand tourer with Triumph straight-six power. Only 32 were built before the original Marcos Engineering folded, making the M70 one of the rarest production Marcos models ever made.
A major modernisation of the GT formula. Marcos kept the signature fibreglass body but introduced an upgraded steel chassis, fresh suspension geometry and Rover V8 power, laying the foundation for the high-performance Marcos cars of the 1990s.
Marcos returned to full factory production with the Mantara. The familiar GT silhouette was modernised with uprated suspension and Rover V8 power, sold through dealers rather than as a component car. It became the platform that the LM-series race cars were built upon.
Built for GT2-class racing on the Mantara platform, the LM-series carried Marcos to Le Mans. Flared arches, race-bred aero and stripped-down interiors made them as fast on the road as they were on the circuit. The LM600 added a 6.0-litre Chevrolet V8 for road-legal supercar pace.
A street-legal version of the V8-powered Mantis Challenge racer. Lightweight, raucous and produced in very limited numbers, the Mantis road car carried the racer's DNA onto the public road.
A softer, more modern reskin of the Mantara, with smoother lines front and rear. Offered with Rover V8s and a turbocharged 2.0-litre Tomcat four, it was among the last Marcos road cars of the era and was built in very small numbers.
An open-topped evolution built on the Mantaray, sharing the same Marcos steel chassis. Smooth, modern and produced in small numbers, the Marcasite was among the final cars of Marcos's second era before the TSO programme.
The last production Marcos before the brand's pause. Developed under Tony Stelliga with Damian McTaggart (formerly of TVR) leading design, the TSO GT housed a 6.0-litre aluminium V8 and was tested by Richard Hammond on Top Gear. On launch it was considered a rival to the leading sports cars of its era.
The return. A mid-engined British supercar targeting 200mph, naturally aspirated and paired with a six-speed manual gearbox. Designed, engineered, built and owned in the United Kingdom, and the start of the next chapter for Marcos.
