1960
Racing is in the Marcos soul and will remain there.
It’s the reason why the company was founded. Jem Marsh was a keen racer, but at 6’4” needed a car built for him, and the first Marcos, the Xylon, was the result. Designed by his co-founder Frank Costin, with a pioneering monocoque chassis, it was immediately successful – the first customer, Bill Moss, won nine races in a row in 1960.
1961
A young Jackie Stewart was another early customer, winning four times in 1961, and the cars were also raced by other future F1 drivers Derek Bell and Jackie Oliver: the Xylon was the springboard for careers resulting in multiple F1 drivers’ championships, a record number of wins at Le Mans and even a new F1 team.
1963-64
The Xylon’s siblings, the Gullwing and Fastback, also competed, but a new generation of Marcos cars was being developed. The GT, introduced in 1964, was intended mainly as a road car. However, retaining the signature Marcos monocoque structure and light weight, it had obvious racing appeal and became a fixture on race tracks for decades.
1964-65
Yet it was the Mini Marcos, launched a year later, which took the racing world by storm. More of a spiritual successor to the Xylon, it was based on the Mini, which had won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964. Marcos reworked the car, stripping out weight, extending the wheelbase and giving it a fibreglass body and monocoque construction, and the result was a pocket rocket. It was a giant-killer on the track.
“The Mini Marcos was the only British car to finish the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours, the famed Ford vs Ferrari head-to-head.”
1966
It won on its debut in the rain, starting from the back of the grid and lapping all but one car. The following year it was the only British car to finish the Le Mans 24 Hours, the famed 1966 Ford vs Ferrari head-to-head. It even set (and still holds) four British land speed records for 1600cc cars. The Mini Marcos is still competing today in historic racing, humbling far more powerful cars.
1968
The Le Mans experience inspired Marsh to produce a “properly quick’ car for sports car racing, and in 1968 Marcos built the futuristic mid-engined Mantis XP. The project hit financial issues and was short-lived, but it remains a statement car for the brand’s vision.
1970s-80s
After the XP project it was down to the GT and its later derivatives to maintain the Marcos track presence. Variants of the GT continued to be very popular racers in the 1970s and 1980s, with Dr Jonathan Palmer, another future F1 star, starting his career in one. But it was the 1993 GT LM series, derived from the Mantara road car, which began a Marcos racing resurgence and took the company back to Le Mans.
1990s-2000s
LM models won UK GT championship titles in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 2000. Dutchman Cor Euser then bought the race-car manufacturing rights, winning the Euro GT Series in 2002 and the Dutch GT championship in 2002, 2004 and 2009. LM series cars are still competitive in contemporary championships, while 1960s models continue to demonstrate the Marcos DNA in historic racing.