History of Marcos cars

In 1959 Jem Marsh and Frank Costin founded Marcos Cars, they took the first three letters of their surnames to make the distinctive company name. Frank Costin applied the skills gained in the field of aviation to create a lightweight wood laminate monocoque body and chassis unit. It was this remarkable chassis combined with excellent streamlining that delivered such incredible performance in its day.
	The Marcos marque secured its credibility in the racing world when driven to victory by renowned drivers such as Jackie Stewart, Derek Bell, Jackie Oliver, Jonathon Palmer and, of course, Jem Marsh.
In 1961 Frank Costin left Marcos cars and Dennis and Peter Adams, undertook the task of furthering his designs. In order to simplify the building processes the brothers designed, purely as a temporary solution, the Marcos 1800. This elegant wooden chassis car was greatly received at the Motor show in 1961 and remains the inspiration for the modern Marcos car. Following this piece of remarkable engineering by the Adams’ the tremendously successful Mini Marcos with its fibre glass body was unveiled in 1966. It was the only British car to complete the Le Mans 24-hour race in the same year. The track success of Marcos was confirmed.
	In 1969 the Adams' brothers were asked to redesign the chassis using steel as an alternative to wood. Their design was essentially a square section tubular space frame that cut 15 hours from the manufacturing times of all the cars. Both the Ford and Volvo powered Marcos’ were resounding successes with the press. More recently a transition was made to the classic Rover V8 engine, which was utilised by the Mantula Spyder in 1986.
The Marcos Mantara, which was launched in 1993, fuelled further growth in the steadily expanding Marcos company. The Mantara, whilst retaining some of the traditional lines of the earlier Marcos cars, was designed to take advantage of the changes in UK type approval legislation, which permitted low volume production and sales through selected dealers.
	The race going Marcos’ prowess was echoed in the LM version of the Mantara that was unveiled in 1993. Marcos returned to the racing circuit at the top, both initially with the LM500 and the following year with the LM600. Powered by a 6-litre Chevy small block V8 the latter of these was triumphant in the British GT series in 1995. It was this success that proved the incentive for Marcos to return to Le Mans after a break of over 30 years. The LM600 is today at the forefront of Worldwide premier GT racing.
The Mantis, incorporating a new Quad-cam V8 engine, was first shown at the 1996 International Motorshow. The staggeringly quick car was immediately seen to be an excellent ‘One Make’ Series racer and in 1998 the first ever Marcos mono-marque challenge was born.
	1998 saw the launch of the Mantaray, which for the first time in 35 years saw a complete re-style to the rear end. The Mantaray has been widely heralded as the most beautiful car ever produced by Marcos. It offers the rare combination of performance, reliability and refinement, a car truly borne from this heritage. The Mantis also became available with a supercharger, pushing the BHP to an enormous 507. This turned out to be the last model Marcos would make, as in the closing stages of 2000 Marcos cars went into recievership.