Marcos GT2
Graham Bell's been back in Marcos' new coupe -- and this time he was driving.
Marcos GT2
No two ways about it, the latest Marcos coupe has definitely struck a chord with the sports car buying public.
The company currently has around 50 firm orders, split roughly 50/50 between the Australia-only specification GT revealed exclusively on PistonHeads in March and the new UK specification GT2 debuted at MotorExpo just four weeks ago.
In fact such is the attraction of the GT2 that Marcos took orders at both MotorExpo and Goodwood from people who were quite happy to put down the required £1,500 deposit without even driving the car.
           Power curves |
Several others who prefer to try before they buy have since been to the factory for a test drive and signed on the dotted line immediately afterwards, and with more test drives lined up over the next fortnight it seems likely that the order book will grow further before the month's out.
Interestingly, Marcos boss Tony Stelliga says that several buyers are middle-aged professionals who lusted after the classic, Adams-styled Marcos coupe when they were younger and couldn’t afford one, while not surprisingly there’s also been a lot of interest from people who currently own TVRs.
Better than a TVR?
Comparison with TVR is both inevitable and the reason Marcos developed the GT2 for the UK market rather than simply selling the GT. For the UK market Stelliga wanted to offer a car that was, as he puts it, “clearly a generation ahead of the Sagaris from the price/performance point”.
So instead of using the GT’s Holden dealer friendly LS1 engine that makes 400bhp in tuned form, the GT2 uses the latest LS6 engine that makes 400bhp straight from the crate. Except Marcos don’t fit it straight from the crate, preferring to do a little tinkering that raises power to a base spec of 420bhp and a top spec of 475bhp.
On the base version this is achieved simply thanks to Marcos’ better exhaust and induction systems plus engine re-mapping, while the top version also gets a bigger inlet manifold and special valve lifters. Cam profile remains standard.
Even so, besides boosting power to 475bhp (at 6,500rpm) that’s also enough to give a broader torque curve, with around 75 per cent of the 400lb-ft maximum available at just 2,000rpm.
Besides the latest LS6 engine, the GT2 also benefits from customer/journalist feedback from TSO test drives and the GT’s long distance testing in Australia. This has resulted in the car getting a whole new steering system and a slightly revised brake pedal with shorter travel.
Marcos has also given the car a new induction system to reduce under bonnet noise, ditching the original twin filters in the nose running to an alloy T-piece in favour of a panel filter in a plenum.
At first glance this -- along with other under bonnet mouldings -- looks like carbon fibre but is actually a tough injection moulded plastic that offers useful production cost savings over GRP. Not to mention of course actual carbon fibre -- which incidentally is available as an option if you want it.
Being the prototype GT2, the car shown here is still being fiddled with to try out a few more tweaks and small improvements before production starts. The entire exhaust system has been changed since it ran at Goodwood Festival of Speed, for instance. Among other changes, this now has its tailpipes cut at an angle rather than straight as this creates a larger opening that produces a deeper, more resonant growl.
That might give you some idea of the work Marcos has put in to try and get this car right, even experimenting with different exhausts just to ensure that it makes the right sort of noise. The end result is purposeful yet still restrained as befitting a gentleman’s Grand Tourer, which is essentially how Marcos view this car.
A gentleman’s Grand Tourer that can be driven like a bloody hooligan on the track admittedly, but a car that’s essentially built for road going comfort and usability rather than hard-edged performance. However, for those customers with particularly strong hooligan tendencies, Marcos do offer a stiffer sports suspension option biased more towards track use.
The prototype has the softer standard suspension, though this does come with adjustable dampers so it’s easily possible to stiffen the ride up from the factory settings if/when you want to.
It also has the first proper ground-up Prodrive specification chassis, with the earlier TSO and GT prototypes using modified versions of older Marcos chassis that didn’t necessarily incorporate all Prodrive’s improvements.
All in all then, this is the most highly developed car Marcos have produced, at least since Tony Stelliga took over and quite probably ever.
Driving the beast
Sadly Prodrive’s test track wasn’t available, so driving was limited to a few miles on local roads, which on a Saturday morning were crammed with traffic moving at the sort of pace that would put the scamera partnerships out of business in no time. If only...
Therefore there was no chance to really explore the car’s full potential -- especially as Marcos had turned the rev limiter down for customer test drives. Still, the GT2 was conceived as a roadgoing grand tourer, so I settled into the driving seat for a not quite so grand tour of the roads around Kenilworth.
Don’t know what headroom under that low roof would be like for anyone much over six foot, but it was certainly fine for Mr Average here, as was legroom, with the body-hugging seat able to move further back than I needed it.
Despite the low roofline and seating position, forward visibility over the long curving bonnet is pretty good, although production versions will have less intrusive covers for the integral roll cage. Check the mirror and there’s also a surprisingly decent view back through that heavily sloped glass hatch, beneath which there’s enough stowage space for a suitcase or three, although currently there’s no cover to hide things.
Steering adjusts for rake but not reach, although you can have adjustable pedals, albeit now as an option rather than standard as per Marcos tradition.
Marcos’ footwell has always been quite roomy, although it can take a bit of getting used to the pedals being offset to the right, while production cars are likely to get a footrest for your left foot.
As with the TSO, the clutch is light enough to make stop-start traffic easy enough to live with, though it can take a bit of effort getting the six-speed gearbox into reverse across its heavily weighted but mechanically precise gate.
With too much traffic about for rapid progress I frequently short-cut the gearchange from second into fourth or even sixth and just let the V8’s massive torque pull the car along. The fact that the rumble from those slash cut exhausts sounds most impressive when the engine’s pulling from low revs might have had something to do with it...
A couple of clear bits showed that given the chance that 5.7 litre 475bhp V8 can get the GT2’s 1170kg moving very quickly indeed, with Marcos estimating it should reach 60mph in four seconds, 100mph in 10 and 185mph flat out. The modest weight and six speed gearbox should help provide relatively good fuel consumption while touring too.
With that revised brake pedal, the big 340mm front/320mm rear AP Racing discs have a very immediate action without being overly vicious, although with no ABS, crudely stamping hard on the pedal will instantly lock the fronts even in the dry.
Even at ‘old fart in a Micra’ speeds it soon becomes apparent that the new steering feels superbly direct and responsive, the slightest input on the small steering wheel connected to the 2.5 turns lock to lock rack producing instant response from the front end of the car.
I was able to get a brief taste of the GT2’s handling after managing to engineer a short clear run along a winding road I know, and it turns in keenly with a nicely neutral feel, at least at moderately fast road speeds.
The softer standard suspension coped superbly with this, which combined with deliberately driving over manhole covers and the like revealed the ride to be taut but compliant, with a bit of thumping from the big low profile tyres but no nasty jarring. No knocks, creaks or rattles either, indicating that it’s been well screwed together.
High quality is of course crucial in a car costing £50k, and a close look at the GT2 shows it to be free of the rippling bodywork and poor panel fit that Marcoses have suffered from in the past.
There’s no doubt that under the ownership of Tony Stelliga Marcos has finally left its old kit car roots way behind and is now fully ready to trade blows with the big boys for a slice of the prestige sports car market.
And Stelliga doesn’t just want to trade blows in the marketplace but also somewhere where Marcos have been successfully trading blows with the big boys for years – on the race track.
It’s looking like the proposed regulations for future sports car racing should suit the GT2 very nicely indeed, and considering that Marcos racers are still getting on the podium with what are effectively obsolete cars, race prepared GT2s should give the opposition some serious headaches.
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© Words & photos copyright Graham Bell 2005
I didn't find the Goodwood ones clear enough to judge it but now I can. It looks fantastic, inside and out, hardly menacing, which is great, because then people will be even more impressed at its horsepower figures. Still, I have a problem with the article, one that I also had a problem with in an issue of CAR, where they were testing the same (admittedly base) engine in an HSV/VXR monaro. The LS2 is not, to mu knowledge, a 5.7 litre engine, but rather a 6.0 litre. Its the same engine as the corvette, which says 6.0l, and I don't know why it keeps on coming up in english based car journals as 5.7 (although in a comparo with a sagaris and an SLK55 AMG, CAR rated the corvettes engine as a 6.0l, thus confounding the issue for me). Little (300ml) things admittedly, Little things...
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