► Marcos is making a comeback
► A new-generation Mosquito is on the way
► How can the brand not end up like TVR?
TVR, Lotus, Westfield, Zenos… seriously, with a roll call of bust-ups and implosions like that, who in their right mind would invest in a small British sports car company? Some have faced multiple bankruptcies, others have changed hands so often they’ve had more leaders than a French parliament.
Yet despite the pitfalls, the inherent romance of a British two-seater sports car is far from dead – never more so than in this time of two-tonne EVs. Combine that enduring appeal with a rich, historic brand… perhaps with a racing history… and maybe it’s understandable why people are still willing to fork out their hard-earned cash. As car enthusiasts, we all want it to work.
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Well now there’s a new old brand coming back from the dead. In the 1970s, Marcos was like a blend of Lotus and TVR, making lightweight, glassfibre coupes powered by grunty engines from Ford or Volvo. The Marcos GT, introduced in 1964, was exceptionally low-slung – measuring just 41 inches high – with a muscular body that rivalled the Jaguar E-Type for curves.
Fast forward to 2026, and Marcos has come back to life again, with a new website and a new pledge to make ‘British, lightweight, analogue’ sport cars. Once again, car enthusiasts up and down the land might like the idea – but can the new Marcos avoid the old fate?
To start with, the new owner seems to have the right credentials. Howard Nash started out running club level racing cars before joining Daewoo UK as chief engineer, emerging – somewhat unexpectedly – as a logistics manager. Over the next 20 years Nash ran some of Europe’s biggest supply-chain companies before starting and then selling his own operation, which gave him the cash to ‘explore other options’.
The option that caught Nash’s imagination was buying Marcos – or at least, what was left of it in 2022.
‘I bought Marcos Heritage, a parts business which owned the assets going right back to 1959. It was sold by a chap called Rory MacMath, who’d worked for Marcos since the 1960s. We’ve got nearly 4000 build records of every car – number three was Jackie Stewart’s, which is wonderful. We’ve got all the original drawings, the moulds, the jigs, the tooling.
The paperwork, however, proved to be a nightmare. ‘Marcos went in and out of ownership many times over the years and bits of the company had been broken off and sold here, there and everywhere. So as soon as we formed Marcos Motor Company, I went through the legal process of getting it all back. It was a minefield. But now we’ve got the original logo and the rights across all categories – the rights to build new cars, an engineering company, a restoration business, and Marcos Heritage, the old parts side of the business.’
Nash won’t tell me what engine they’re using but he says it’s around 650kg and puts out 250bhp. ‘So it’s extremely lightweight,’ he says. ‘And this will definitely be a road car, though it’ll start on track – hopefully by the end of 2026. We’re looking at opportunities for a onemake series, though we’re in a planning phase.’
And after the mid-engined sports car, there are further plans to revive the gorgeous GT of the golden era.
‘In terms of the original GT shape, we have all the moulds, but you wouldn’t dream of doing it in plywood today. There were 380 pieces of plywood in the original chassis, and we do still make a lot of wooden parts to keep them on the road – they’re still very popular. But the idea of trying to get a plywood car through modern homologation…’
So the plans are in place – but the big, blunt question is, how will Marcos avoid bankruptcy this time?
‘Some of that is down to our broad business sense,’ Nash says. ‘We’re not coming with a passion to produce a car at any cost – we’re coming with a set of business rules. Marcos cars have to be affordable – there’s no point pretending it’s something it isn’t. That’s different to saying, “Okay, we’ve got a badge, we’re going to stick it on something and try to charge £500k for it.”’
And despite the long history of wobbly British sports car companies, there are success stories out there: ‘You’ve only got to look somewhere between Ginetta and Ariel, in terms of product type if not price range. Ginetta was a lesser-known version of Marcos in its day [it dates back to 1958]. They’ve shown you can build a company around racing.’
Nash reminds us what it’s all for: ‘We’re trying to produce cars that put a smile on your face – a lightweight chassis, a powerful engine and a manual gearbox. There’s a simplicity to that.’
Fingers crossed it works.