Plywood Sundae with Fiberglass Topping: Marcos GT

As noted in our previous piece on the Colorado Conclave, there were some pretty rare cars (and more than a few pretty and rare cars) in attendance.  These included several species of Lotus, as well as more arcane exotica like TVR and Marcos.  It is the Marcos which is today's subject. Britishers Jeremy Marsh and Frank Costin (a body designer already known for his work on Lister and Lotus race cars) contrived in the late 50s and early 60s to offer English club racers the benefits of light weight and high strength provided by adoption of a plywood chassis.  This was not like the ash frames which merely supported the body panels on cars like then-current Morgans and vintage Rileys and Alvises.  The suspensions and drivetrains on all these cars were supported on steel chassis frames. The Marcos, however, featured a load-bearing automotive fuselage (Costin had been involved with the design of the RAF's Mosquito fighter-bombers, also with plywood fuselage material). Costin and Marsh first tried this structure on the Xylon (Greek for 'wood') GT in the 750cc class.  While the relentlessly homely body design challenged the Bristol 450* for title of world's ugliest race car, the little Xylon performed well enough to permit a promising bloke named Jackie Stewart his first racing victories...

Costin left the company in 1961, and not long after that Marsh and stylist Dennis Adams and his brother Peter set to work on a proper, road-going GT with the same values of simplicity and light weight as the Xylon.  When it emerged in 1964, however, it was clear the brothers had not been inspired by the Xylon's ill-proportioned exterior. What replaced the ugly duckling was a swan by comparison...

The picture below depicts that famous plywood chassis under the smooth contours of the fiberglass body.  Here it is without the steel tubular subframe supporting the front suspension and engine...

In order to guard against moisture damage, the plywood structure was covered with fiberglass during the production process.  Early cars featured a De Dion rear suspension with inboard drum brakes (cutting edge technology from a dozen years earlier) while there were outboard discs at the front.  This design was later simplified for cost reasons to a live rear axle, whilst (for stopping reasons) disc brakes replaced the drums. Sometime after mid- 1969 the Marcos team replaced the plywood structure with a steel frame of square section tubing. The photo below shows two Marcos GTs parked between a charming mid-50s Austin sedan and psychedelically-painted Morris Minor.  It helps to have those human figures for scale; the Marcos is a shocking 41.5 inches tall, about 6.5" lower than an E-type Jaguar coupe. Note that the Marcos featured a forward-tilting bonnet in unit with the front fender tops to allow unhindered engine access.  The first engine to appear in this space was the 1800cc Volvo, chosen for reliability and adaptability to performance enhancements.  At $6,700 in the US, the Marcos faced still competition from Porsche and Jaguar, so the company made various attempts to reduce costs and / or offer more performance.  As a result, during the car's initial production run from 1964-72 Ford inline 4s of 1500, 1650 and also the modern 105E in 1600 cc size were tried, as well as a 2 liter Ford V4, a 3 liter Ford V6, and inline 6s from Volvo as well as Triumph.  The profusion of mechanical approaches reflected, perhaps, a level of indecision that showed up in the design department after the evergreen GT first appeared.

The blue Marcos shown runs a 1.6 liter Ford inline 4; the yellow car from 1970 is powered by a 3 liter Volvo inline 6...

While the Marcos team suffered from indecision on the drivetrain front, their first serious attempt at a production car design managed to make a strong and decisive first impression on the public. Around a hundred of the plywood chassis cars left the factory, of which just over 30 were of the De Dion suspension type.  Many more were sold of the steel-framed cars, helped no doubt by the passing resemblance in proportion and particular the handling of the tail surfaces to Giorgetto Giugiaro's one-off Alfa Canguro show car, which appeared the same year as the Marcos GT. The Canguro is the car above.  Meanwhile, the Marcos team, while facing frequent shortfalls of cash, decided to produce a Le Mans racer based upon F1 components including Cooper suspension assemblies, a Brabham Repco 3 liter V8 (aluminum GM block with sohc heads), and a body with such a collision of curves and angles that it recalled automotive pioneer James Ward Packard's dictum, "Let's do something, even if it's wrong."  The resulting Mantis XP is shown below...

During the same year, 1968, the Marcos team hatched a production car called the Mantis, but it had no resemblance in engineering or visual terms to the mid-engined Mantis XP. Instead, they proposed a 4 passenger GT coupe powered by an inline 2.5 liter Triumph 6. Much of the body design appears as though the design team decided to save time by placing a plastic model of that year's new Lamborghini Espada in an oven, turning up the heat, and then going off to play cricket...

As for the car's anteater snout, no Italian inspiration can be found.  It took a long while to get the Mantis into production, which had only barely started when it was shut down in 1971 after 32 units been assembled.  A Marcos-styled Mini was built from 1965 for about 10 years, outlasting the bankruptcy of the original firm by 3 years, and sold under the Midas name for some years after by another firm.  Jem Marsh revived Marcos in 1981, founding its product line on versions of the original GT.  Production stuttered on into the 21st century, with interruptions by liquidations and bankruptcies in 2002 and 2007, that last being the final one, perhaps...

*Footnotes:  An informative essay by David LaChance on the restoration by a father and son team of the '65 Marcos 1800 GT pictured second can be found in the Hemmings online post from April 2015. The Bristol 450 race car design is depicted in our post entitled Muddling Through with Bristol, from 9/22/16.

Photo credits:

Top:  silverstoneauctions.com

2nd:  hemmings.com

3rd:  pinterest.com

4th & 5th:  the author

6th:  bertone studios

7th:  autoblog.nl

8th:  wikimedia

9th:  classic-kitcars.com