When you and your wife have agreed you need a new car big enough for the family and the pet dog and one week later you present her with a 54-year-old, two-seat British sports car, you’re either very brave or very foolish and probably both.
“As instructed by my wife, I had been looking for our next family car when I was sent a link to a Marcos GT 3-Litre advertised on Facebook,” explains Mark Edwards.
“I told her I was going to look at it simply out of curiosity, because I’d not seen one before, and the next thing I’d put down a deposit on it and the following week went to the West Country from our home in London to pick it up. When I arrived back in it, my wife exclaimed: ‘It ’s only got two seats!’ I had to go and get a family car after that – an Audi Q5.”
‘GT’ was the name Marcos gave all of its cars prior to the Mantis of 1970. It was launched in 1964 with a wooden chassis, a glassfibre body and an engine from the Volvo P1800. More powerful versions followed, culminating in the 3-Litre of 1968.
By then, the wooden chassis had been replaced by one made of steel, but otherwise the model remained a front-engined, rear-drive, two-seat coupé so low that the driving position approaches the horizontal.
With its large headlights, thrusting bonnet and classic profile, it’s easy to understand why Mark’s family car shopping trip went awry.
“I just fell in love with it,” he says, almost apologetically.
His GT was built in 1969 and sent to South Africa to drum up business – which, sadly, it failed to do. So back it came, being registered in 1970. Only 196 GT 3-Litres were built, 130 of them for the UK.
When Mark bought his car in 2019, its odometer was showing 69,000 miles. Driving it away from its former home, he decided it needed major surgery.
He says: “First, I handed the car over to a specialist to have the engine bored out to 3.1 litres and given a stage-four makeover. That cost £9000, but now it makes 180bhp and loads of torque. Next, I had the four-speed Ford Type 5 gearbox (the one that served in more powerful Ford Capris) and the fourth-gear selector fork rebuilt. That and having the electrical system refurbished came to £5000. So yes, I’ve spent £14,000 on a car that cost me £12,000 to buy.”
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