British Brand Announces Comeback With First New Car In More Than 20 Years

British Brand Announces Comeback With First New Car In More Than 20 Years

by

The 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans is known for the tense tussle between Ford and Ferrari but the untold story of that race is the Mini Marcos, the only British car to cross the finish line. Since its founding in the late 1950s, Marcos was entwined in motorsports and accompanied by its range of highly distinctive road cars until the early 2000s.

In 2022, Howard Nash acquired the business, initially planning to keep the restoration side alive to maintain existing Marcos cars. However, the vision for the brand has shifted to creating its own cars again with its first track day model due to be available for customers by the end of 2026, followed by a road-going version – think a wide bodied Lotus Elise. Nash gives an insight into the transformation of Marcos and where the brand is heading.

Trinity Francis: Walk us through how you came to own Marcos.

Howard Nash: I got the opportunity to buy a bodyshop group with eight bodyshops and Marcos which was something that I’d always had a real liking for. I loved Marcos in its racing days and had so much respect for the brand. When it became available, I grabbed it but I didn’t really know what I’d bought, it was quite an eclectic mix of stuff.

We’ve got all the molds dating back to the first one from 1959. We’ve got all the tooling and not just parts of cars, we’ve got whole car models and bodies. We’ve also got all of the original hand-drawn engineering drawings and even up to the later cars we’ve got all the CAD drawings and homologation information.

Over the last four years, it’s been fascinating getting to know some of the Marcos owners but the owners are ageing and one of the things we want to do is make something to attract a younger audience. We want to create something wacky and fun. If you ever drive a Marcos, they put a smile on your face, they were always lightweight, powerful and usually made a lot of noise – real driver’s cars. That’s what we want to bring to the future.

Francis: How have you started with this vision so far?

Nash: We have a restoration side of the business and through driving the cars, I really get what the founders were trying to achieve. Whilst I thought it would be nice to buy an old car company with the heritage and keep the cars that are out there still going, I changed my view on what we were going to do. Whilst Marcos made very pretty cars in the ‘60s, a lot of people were more interested in the fun element than the look of them.

So for our recent evaluation project, Mosquito, I started thinking about the original Mini Marcos which was based on an original Mini. I thought about if we were going to do that today, what would that look like. So, it was an exercise we invested a lot in to see if there’s something in it for the future. It had such amazing feedback and people recognised there’s a Mini Marcos in there.

We are now definitely planning to engineer the Mosquito as a car for track days and racing. We are targeting this to be commercially available from Q3 2026, with the aim of racing in the 2027 season.

Francis: What can we expect from Marcos’ first production road and track day car?

Nash: We’re planning to have it on the road by the end of next year. We have a rolling chassis which weighs 650kg, with a 250hp rear engine and rear wheel drive. It’s like driving a go kart, it’s absolutely mad but it really puts a smile on your face. It’s compact and the strength of the car is in a thermoformed plastic tub. It’s hollow inside for lightness but it’s incredibly strong. When it was first built, I hit it as hard as I could with a sledgehammer and it just bounced off.

In terms of costing, we’re early days but we know exactly what the rolling chassis costs and the supply chain for that is secured. We will be able to make a car affordable. We don’t want to be one of those manufacturers that produces a handful of cars that are all $300,000 each, that’s not what Marcos is about. We’re never going to make thousands of them but we want it priced at five figures.

Francis: Are we likely to see Marcos build an electric car anytime soon?

Nash: Ultimately, we’re going to be driven by regulation, so we’re certainly not ignoring electric. We’ve got three projects on the go that will only work with a petrol engine because we’re sticking to our motto which is ‘British, lightweight, analog’. I can’t see an EV fitting with our current model lineup. That said, we’re speaking with suppliers who can provide electric platforms that we could put bodies on.

There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years of bespoke, ultra low volume vehicles, all big ticket stuff. We want to tap into what we think there’s an appetite for at a much more affordable end. We have a brand with a heritage behind it and a fairly sizable following so I think that’s what we fundamentally need to focus on.

I think to begin with, naturally, that’s going to be an internal combustion engine. As far as electric power is concerned, the technology is improving all the time but to be able to create a car that’s lightweight enough and therefore fun to drive with fantastic handling, all at the right price point, will be challenging.

Francis: What does the future hold for Marcos?

Nash: There’s three paths we want to follow. The first one was a bit of an internal exercise to reimagine a modern Mini Marcos built for racing. The second project is developing our first production car. We’re currently looking at the body and interior design for that ahead of launching in 2026. The other thing we want to do is restore and tweak heritage cars. For instance, if you were to drive an old GT, when you’ve got the seatbelt on, you can’t reach the handbrake. We’ve moved the handbrake so you can actually use it.

We’d also like to look to the future for a halo car. The ‘60s and ‘70s cars were so beautiful that we feel somewhere down the road there has to be a new one of those, something that reflects those beautiful shapes. Jay Leno himself said if the Marcos GT had an Italian badge it would be worth $250,000.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

#British #Brand #Announces #Comeback #Car #Years

Leave a Comment

×