MARCOS  "THE STORY OF A GREAT BRITISH SPORTSCAR"

SCOOP! RETURN OF THE MARCOS COUPE

Graham Bell gets an exclusive sneak preview of the new Marcos

Marcos CoupeAlthough Marcos has only produced convertibles since Tony Stelliga revived the company, the marque’s reputation was built on coupes.

First was the ‘ugly duckling’ gullwing of 1959, which famously gave a young Jackie Stewart his first taste of racing success. This was followed by the ‘breadvan’ fastback and, most notably, the stunning Dennis Adams designed 1800 coupe, which caused a sensation at its 1964 London Racing Car Show debut and went on to form the basis of Marcos models for over three decades.

Well now the wraps are about to come off a new Marcos coupe and it promises to be the best and fastest yet.

The original styling sketches for the coupe were only done late last year, and it’s taken a huge effort by Marcos’ dedicated design and development team to get the prototype up and running in such a short time, working seven days a week and frequently into the small hours.

While the front end makes it fairly obvious that the coupe is based on the TSO, there’s still been a lot of new work to do in addition to the major task of making the new body, with a lot of trim, electrical and detail changes required.

Marcos CoupeLooking at the new back end it’s equally obvious that there’s a lot of racing influence in the styling, with the fuel filler being integrated into the offside rear side window and the tail sporting a serious looking diffuser.

The chassis is essentially the TSO’s Prodrive developed spaceframe item with a full roll cage added, while the rear hatch on that fastback body opens to give access to a usefully sized luggage compartment. Power is provided by the same 400bhp 5.7 litre V8 as used in the TSO R/T but breathing through a different exhaust - and having heard them fire it up at the factory I can tell you the noise it makes is awesome!

Dubbed the GT, the new coupe should appeal to those who want a muscular lightweight fastback but find the ‘Blackpool Chainsaw Massacre’ styling of the TVR Sagaris just too quirky, or who prefer their brutal performance to be a accompanied by the thunder of a big V8.

History shows that every previous Marcos coupe has been raced, so could this new coupe herald the return of Marcos to GT racing in the not too distant future? Well, with a chassis developed by multiple championship winners Prodrive and a powerplant derived from the bulletproof race proven GM LS series engines it certainly has all the right ingredients to continue the successful racing tradition of its forbears.

No launch date for the coupe has yet been announced as there’s some testing and development to be done before it goes on sale.

The car is making its world debut today in South Australia at the Clipsal 500 Adelaide motor race. The TSO GT ran pre-race laps before a crowd of over 250,000 racing fans and will also be on display during the event. The car will then undergo a 2800 km test program in preparation for the Australian marketplace.

"The TSO GT is a sharp, reliable, high performance V8 British sports coupe for Australia," said Tony Stelliga, Chairman of Marcos Engineering. "We are delighted to showcase it at Australia's premier V8 motorsport event, and to conduct testing in the diverse environment that Australia offers as we prepare it for this exciting market."

Marcos has also established a new business, Marcos Australia, to import and distribute Marcos cars in Australia.