Frank Costin, the Cos in Marcos, was more than just the company co-founder: he was the DNA of the company’s products. A pioneering aerodynamicist and an uncompromising engineer, when he teamed up with Jem Marsh to form Marcos he had already created revolutionary aerodynamic
bodies for the Vanwall VW5 GP car which won the 1958 inaugural F1 Constructors’ world championship and the astonishingly sleek Mk8-11 series for Lotus (his brother Mike was Colin Chapman’s number two at Lotus and later the Cos in Cosworth, which produced the dominant DFV F1 engine). Costin’s designs all had not only low drag but stability, and clever ducting to exploit air pressure.
Whereas Costin’s aerodynamics prowess allowed Chapman to concentrate on the chassis, for Marcos he applied his philosophy ground-up, creating his own advanced chassis. Transferring his knowledge from aircraft design,
he used the same timber structure as the DeHavilland Mosquito fighter-bomber he had worked on. This gave unmatched strength and lightness, for exceptional power-to-weight ratio and handling.
The structure was the core of Costin’s designs: the hard points defined what could be done with the body, which made his earliest Marcos cars, the Xylon – designed for the 6’4” Jem Marcos to race – unconventional looking, Marsh being merely another ‘hard point’: the form was dictated entirely by the function. With the body wrapped tight around the structure the Xylon may not have been aesthetic – it became known as the Ugly Duckling – but it was quick. Quick enough to attract ambitious young drivers including Jackie Stewart.
And most importantly it was the world’s first true monocoque chassis car: remarkably, the small, young
“Frank Costin was the Adrian Newey of his day.”
Marcos enterprise had established the universal standard for race-car design for decades to come. And, thanks to Costin, Marcos almost simultaneously even introduced monocoque construction into road cars through the Xylon’s considerably more attractive variants, the Luton Gullwing, Spyder and Fastback.
Costin’s absolutist approach and his unwillingness to compromise for the requirements of commercial road-car production meant that he split with Jem Marsh in 1961. But by then he had already established Marcos as a brand with a commitment to optimising
performance through pioneering lightweighting, chassis integrity and aerodynamics.
He was a visionary. He was the Adrian Newey of his day.
Dennis and Peter Adams, who defined the signature Marcos GT shape which influenced all subsequent Marcos models, were two of the most forward-looking designers in the industry.
Every bit as visionary as Frank Costin, they tested the limits of futurist design forms just as Costin pursued undiluted engineering function. So it was ironic that when Costin left Marcos, unwilling to bend to the imperatives of viable road cars, the Adams brothers created the 1800 GT – a universally popular design and an immediate success. It was intended only as a stopgap (they were working on a concept with three-abreast seating and the Chevy Turbo-Air engine) but it became the Marcos.
With a sleek, low-slung fibreglass body and a long shark-nosed bonnet, the GT took the limelight at its 1964 London Racing Car Show unveiling, attracting celebrities and comparisons to the E-Type. It’s even thought to have influenced the design of the Lamborghini Miura.
Under the Adams brothers the GT got a 3.0-litre V6 so it could compete with almost any sports car on the road, grabbing the attention of the press. Their pragmatic side showed in the introduction of smaller engines to
allow lower price points, and then the development of a cheaper steel frame to replace the original timber structure, opening Marcos up to more buyers and the US market.
But they were set apart by a maverick, forward-looking approach. The Marcos Mantis XP race car and the Mantis road car were straight out of Thunderbirds. Neither was ultimately successful, but they inspired the Adams’ Probe project.
An ‘investigation into the extremes of styling,’ with entry via a sliding glass
roof, the Probe 15 was displayed on the Marcos motor show stand in 1969, and the Probe 16 was launched as the lowest ever road car. It was front-page news globally and featured heavily in Kubrick’s futurist classic A Clockwork Orange.
Yet it was the Marcos GT form for which they are rightly remembered. They had always wanted to make supercars, and appropriately their final Marcos project was the mid-1990s Marcos LM series – recognisably related to the GT, but the fastest Marcos cars ever made, a very British supercar and a title-winning race car, competing with exotic brands like Porsche and McLaren.
