Every British sports car company has its own distinct identity. Caterham may have a three-seat EV in the wings but for decades its sole model has been the skeletal Seven, and while that car's original creator is now also in the big, heavy electric car business, it’ll forever be known as the lightweight pioneer. And just look at Morgan. The Super 3 sticks out like a sore thumb against the Plus Four, Six and the gorgeous new Midsummer, yet its old-school barminess could only come from a company that still (sort of) uses ash wood frames.
Noble, however, has always been a bit of an outlier. Lee Noble’s first production car, the M10, was a two-seater convertible that sold in the single digits, and while the follow-up M12 carried over the Ford Mondeo-sourced 2.5-litre V6 and rear lights, it was a far more focused offering. All were fixed roof coupes with wind tunnel-tuned splitters and wings, while a brace of turbocharges doubled the power output of the M10. And because it was made from scaffolding and plastic, it was a good deal cheaper than the supercars it was run rings around on track days. So when Noble announced a successor to the M12 was in the works, many expected more supercar slaying performance at an affordable price.
What we’d end up getting is the car we have here: the M600. Like its predecessor, it could take the fight to most supercar makes and come out on top, yet it also had lots of carbon fibre, a stainless steel tub and a price tag five times greater than the outgoing M400. So what happened, then? Although the step between the two looks ginormous on paper, the M600 was a clear evolution of two prototypes that never saw production but did appear on TV a few times. It began with the M14, which was deemed too close to the M12 but is clearly the genesis of the M600’s design, while the M15 featured an all-new chassis and a longitudinally-mounted engine.
So no, the jump between the M12 and M600 isn’t quite as drastic as it first seems, although the latter was considerably faster and more complex than anything Noble had built before. The company finally ditched the old Mondeo V6 for a 4.4-litre Yamaha V8 with up to 659hp on tap (though it could be dialled back to 456hp and 558hp with the twist of a dial). Transmitting power to the rear wheels was a six-speed manual gearbox, while all four corners featured double wishbones with coilovers. A considerably more hi-tech offering, then, though as standard the body was made from glass fibre, with carbon panels available for a hefty fee - one that the original owner of this car forked out on.
While it wasn’t the affordable performance car many were hoping for, its do-it-yourself gearbox, primitive traction control and complete lack of ABS made the M600 one of the last great analogue supercars. That said, we found it surprisingly approachable when we tested it back in 2011, with Sutters writing: “It's actually a well-mannered, albeit very rapid machine that will, in the end, do everything it can to help you out - even if your inner maniac gets carried away every once in a while.”
Hard to imagine a featherweight, 659hp V8 supercar that can hit 60mph in just three seconds as ‘well-mannered’, but who am I to question the mighty Sutcliffe? Anyway, Noble only built around 30 of them worldwide, and only a fraction of those will be carbon-bodied like the car we have here. It’s offered at £239,900, or about the same price as the glass fibre cars were going for a decade ago. And it’s in superb condition, with just 7,000 miles on the clock and the Alcantara interior seemingly devoid of greasy hand prints. But if you prefer your Noble with more Mondeo parts, this M400 could be yours for an 75 per cent discount…
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