Wednesday 23rd March 2005

Marcos TSO-GT

Pics and vids from down under

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Launch videos: MP4, Quicktime (large), Quicktime (medium)

The new Marcos TSO-GT was launched last weekend at a race meeting in Australia.

Whilst the marque has traditionally caterered to a British market, owner Tony Stelliga is keen to make Marcos a global brand. With the Australian's love of V8s, going down under with the coupe makes a lot of sense.

As well as launching the car there, the facilities in Australia make it a useful destination as far as testing is concerned. The hot climate and access to fast roads allow the engineers to push the car hard in extreme conditions.

Launching a hard top and opening up the market in Australia will also allow Marcos to benefit from a less seasonal sales pattern. In recent years the Marcos has sold drop-tops in the UK -- a tough market and prone to poor summers hitting sales.

TSO-GT

Stelliga wants to expand beyond Australia and into the Asian markets too so we're sure to see a significant expansion of the brand in the years to come.

Marcos took the opporunity to launch the TSO-GT in front of a significant audience. The Clipsal 500 race in Adelaide was attended by an incredible 240,000 people -- more than attend the Grand Prix in the UK.

Australians are far more at home with V8-powered cars than the domestic UK market making it a potentially very lucrative outlet for Marcos. The 400bhp, 5.7 litre V8 is used in Holdens and will be very familiar to many.

The 1,100Kg car is being built to comply with Australian regulations initially with a UK launch pencilled in for later in the year.

Link: www.marcos-eng.com

[sublimatica]

That sounds utterly
Love it. Well done Marcos. Pity we didn't see it doing a fast lap though.

Surprised something so ...err... naughty can get past the Australian legislators these days though. Thought they were clamping down on cars like this, judging by some of the comments on these boards these days.