Marcos Engineering-Part 1: Stepping into the Sixties... #Blogpost

Marcos,a name you’ve probably never heard of before were a small British Sportscar Company of whom manafactured some stunning Vehicles in their lifetime,however much like most manafacturers they had their ups and downs and I’ll guide you through the history of Marcos in three seperate posts on the three eras. Without further ado let’s begin…

1959-1972 The birth of the GT

In 1959 two Welsh men by the names of Jem Marsh and Frank Costin founded Marcos,the Marcos name was created using the first three letters of each of the founders surnames. All early Marcos vehicles were made using marine plywood which was an extremeley lightweight material at the time and Costin had worked on de Havilland Mosquito Fighter-Bomber so he knew of its advantages…

The early GT prototypes built in 1959 and 1960 had some very unique features,the roof was very high to be able to accomodate the very tall Jem Marsh,it had gullwing doors and it also had a four-piece split windscreen. They were powered by either 1,0L or 1.2L Ford engines,they were also hugely successful in motorsport driven many people such as Jem and the legend Jackie Stewart! There was also a production variant of which only 39 examples were produced,they retained the gullwing doors of the racecar and used many handling components from the Triumph Herald also engine sizes could vary from 1.0L of displacement up to 1.5L.
During 1961 Costin was replaced by the Adams brothers Peter and Dennis on the design team and together they created the Marcos Luton Gullwing which would ultimately lead to the creation of the Fastback GT…

T’was 1963 and Marcos revealed the reworked Fastback GT,this time it did not have the gullwing doors and to homologate for sportscar racing it weighed in at a mere 475Kg (1,047lb). As with every other early Marcos racecars,it was very succesful in its category. 1964 brought the road variant,dubbed the “GT” with various engine size prefixes such as the 1800 GT using a Volvo 1.8L enginewhich was their most popular model but production costs were high…

During 1966,to reduce production costs,Marcos opted to use a more conventional suspension system and have the option of a Ford V4 engine. 1966 marked the first year of US exportation and due to emissions regulations,had to use a Volvo inline-6 for the 3L model. The year before in 1965 Marcos introduced their own Mini Kit Car as a cheaper alternative to the GT called the “Mini Marcos”,it was not however successful as a road car and it was better as a racecar. The Mini Marcos was the only British automobile to finish the 1966 24hrs of Le Mans and it continued production until 1975,3 years after the company went into liquidation (more on that towards the end of the post.)

The Marcos Mantis M70 was introduced in 1968 as a 2+2 seater sportscar which is regarded as one of the ugliest British cars in history,it was powered by a 2.5L inline-6 from the Triumph TR6. On the contrary the race variant,called the XP is one of the best looking racecars of the 1960’s,it had a very angular design and was powered by a mid-mounted Brabham V8. Marcos raced it at Spa in 1968 but electronic problems caused by heavy rain force it to pull out.

And then disaster struck for the company in 1971, unsuccessful sales of the Mantis M70 and many unsold vehicles in the US,coupled with a very expensive move to new premises caused Marcos to unfortunately go into its first voluntary liquidation in 1972… The Rob Waker group continued Marcos production for a few years after buying all the assets.

At the moment it’s not looking too good for Marcos,but all will be explained in the next part of the story….

I hope you enjoyed the first part of my history on Marcos and I’ll see you all again in part 2!