Marcos was founded in 1959 by Jem Marsh and Frank Costin, the name is a portmanteau of theirs and over the decades it built a quietly extraordinary reputation. Its first car, the Xylon, had a chassis made of timber and was raced by Jackie Stewart and Derek Bell. The Mini Marcos became the only British car to finish the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the 1990s the LM600 placed seventh overall at Le Mans, an astonishing result for a small independent manufacturer. The last production Marcos, the TSO GT, was tested by Richard Hammond on Top Gear and was considered a genuine rival to the best sports cars of its era.
Then in 2007 it was gone again, the latest in a series of collapses that had taken the company down in 1972, 2000 and various points in between.
It has now been brought back, once more, by businessman Howard Nash, who acquired the original Marcos assets in 2022 including the tooling, moulds, production rights and the still-active Heritage Spares division. Nash told Hagerty:
"I used to look after a very, very quick Hillman Imp and a Mini Marcos joined the series and absolutely left us standing. It blew us all away. I've never forgotten that."
That memory, from late 1980s club racing, is where this revival starts.
The Mosquito and what comes after
The first new car from what Nash calls Marcos Motor Company is codenamed the Mosquito, a modern interpretation of the Mini Marcos built on the running gear of an R53 Mini Cooper S. It is a track-ready lightweight, drawing directly on the legacy of the 1966 Le Mans car. According to Hagerty, Nash expects it to be in customers' hands before the end of 2026 and is already developing plans for a dedicated race series around the model.
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A second car is already underway. As Yahoo Autos reports, it will be a mid-engined road and track car with around 350 horsepower and a target weight of approximately 650 kg. That puts the power to weight ratio in the same territory as a Bugatti Veyron. The rolling chassis has been built and crash tested. Nash has been clear that these will not be bespoke million pound machines the intent is for a Marcos to be within reach of serious driving enthusiasts rather than trophy collectors.
Longer term plans, as Autoblog outlines, include a successor to the V8 powered GT cars targeting 2030, and the tantalising possibility of a strictly limited recreation of the 1968 Mantis XP, the wild endurance racing car powered by a three litre Repco Brabham Formula One engine that ran once, at the 1000 Km of Spa, and retired.
Nash also holds the original body moulds for almost the entire Marcos back catalogue, meaning continuation cars built from original tooling form a third strand of the business. The Heritage Spares arm has been running continuously since 2000 and serves existing owners.
There is a twist
Auto Express and Autoblog both flag something that complicates the story. At almost exactly the same time Nash's plans became public, a completely separate company called Marcos Cars Ltd also announced it owned the rights to the Marcos name. Its CEO is William Storey, best known as the founder of energy drink brand Rich Energy and the man behind one of the more chaotic Formula One sponsorship arrangements in recent memory, when Rich Energy's partnership with the Haas team ended abruptly mid-season in 2019. Storey's company claims it will launch an F1-inspired supercar and has described Nash's operation as "misleading."
Nash's Marcos Motor Company holds the original physical assets the moulds, the tooling, the jigs, the build records and the Heritage Spares business. The legal question of who owns what appears unresolved in public.
This is, it must be said, exactly the kind of thing that tends to derail British sports car revivals. The history of the genre TVR, Jensen, Allard, Bristol is littered with names that burned bright on announcement day and then quietly faded as legal disputes, funding gaps and production realities accumulated.
Nash sounds like he has thought about this. He told Hagerty:
"Apart from power steering, there are no gadgets to stop it going sideways."
If the Mosquito arrives on schedule, a small, loud, sideways British sports car with Le Mans history will be back on track by Christmas. That is a sentence worth hoping turns out to be true.
Sources:
- Hagerty — Marcos Will Be Back on Track in 2026
- Hagerty — Marcos Is Making a Comeback
- Auto Express — Marcos back: British sports car brand's big plan and swirling controversy
- Autoblog — The Marcos Comeback: A New Chapter for a Forgotten Sports Car Hero
- Yahoo Autos — This British Sports Car Brand Is Trying to Make a Comeback Again
- CarThrottle — British Sports Car Brand Marcos Is Returning With An All-New Model
- Marcos Motor Company — marcoscars.com
