In the late 60's a small company from Wiltshire decided to set out on a challenge for Le Mans and armed with very good contacts built the Marcos Mantis XP. Purchasing an F1 Brabham-Repco 740 V8 from Jack Brabham, coupling it to Mike Hewland’s DG300 transaxle and persuading John Cooper to provide the previous years suspension from his F1 car, they had a winning formula.
Unfortunately due to French civil unrest the car made only one competitive outing at a very wet 1000km of Spa-Francochamps and never made it to the Le Mans race. Shortly after its only race the car was due to be registered for road use, but the UK taxes in place forced the car to be shipped to the US to save the project. It toured the US motor shows before being snapped up by it's current owners in 1970 who used it on the roads around LA ever since.
In 2004 the road runs started to take their toll on the car and restoration started gradually, but on hearing that Prescott was set to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Marcos the restoration sped up so the car could return back to the UK.
Credit and more info: Classic & Sports Car - Nov 2009