Tag Archives: Marcos Mantis

CMI Rally 2025 Jem Marsh Memorial Race

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What a great weekend at this year’s Club Maroc International annual rally! Held at the Snetterton Circuit in Norfolk across the weekend of the 9th and 10th of August in wonderful sunshine it was one of the best rallies I have attended. Much kudos to Debbie Morrison, Isobel Chivers & those others involved in over a year of planning to make the magic happen!

The rather smart decals to showcase the rally weekend & races.
Complete with swanky event pass.
… And cap!

Pending official confirmation there were 36 Marcos cars each day, including cars from France, Poland & of course the Luxembourg Ultras.

My kind of car park! Friday evening arrival at the main hotel prior to a well deserved cider…

Amongst many highlights over the weekend, perhaps the biggest were the two ‘Jem Marsh Memorial Race’ races (one on Saturday & one on Sunday) which were included in the weekend’s racing programme. Each race lasted 20 minutes & was exclusive to Marcos race cars with all drivers being ‘the real deal’ – current racing licenses required! There was an amazing variety of Marcos race cars on the track together, ranging from Cor Euser in the legendary 6.9 litre Chevvy powered ‘La Bomba’ & Warren Gilbert in the Topcats LS7 engined GT3 Mantis, through to a couple of Mini Marcos, with some 1800s thrown in for good measure.

Cor was his usual very approachable self. One of racing’s nice guys (unless you are driving against him!).
La Bomba, followed by the Topcats Mantis.
Cor Euser in ‘La Bomba’ takes the chequered flag from the Topcats’ Mantis in Sunday’s Jem Marsh Memorial Race.

A big shout out to the Marcos Motor Company who very kindly arranged the marquee & the sumptuous lunch on both days. In fact the catering was exceptional, with Bay and Fig Events being highly recommended.

The Marcos Motor Company did everyone proud with a lovely marquee & opulent lunch in the shade.

To top it off, the French owners of the two LM600s that raced at the Le Mans 24 Hour in 1995 had trailered the cars over. I never thought to see them together again outside of the Le Mans Classic paddock, so a great opportunity to have a look round them again. Better still, due to the French racing Marcos having mechanical issues during qualifying, the owners put car Number 70 out on the track for the Saturday Jem Marsh Memorial Race. Whilst it wasn’t trying to compete during the race, it was splendid to see it out on the track (for the first time in a good few years I gather)

Ready for the trip back to France.

To close out, here’s a link to a very slick YouTube clip on the event which is well worth a watch. All credit to the content creator, AinsleyN. Nice job!

Oulton Park Gold Cup 2025

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Another opportunity to meet up with the good folk who make up the North West Marcos owners. This time it was our annual outing to the Gold Cup weekend at local favourite Oulton Park circuit. Unfortunately some illness meant not everyone made it as planned, but we managed four cars & a decent spot on the hill overlooking Denton.

A peachy pitch with a good view of the track.
Somewhat overcast for much of the day, but the threatening clouds never quite delivered & the hood stayed down.
The massed ranks of Marcos@Oulton, with Alan Checkley & Martin having camped to secure first place in the line up. Hardcore!

Next stop… The annual CMI rally down at Snetterton. Bring it on…

North West Classic Vehicles meet – Heskin Hall

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A very pleasant morning at Heskin Hall, hosted by North West Classic Vehicles. Not somewhere I have been before, or indeed knew about. The parking marshals did a great job fitting in a lot of cars, & a lot of cars there were! A real mixture of old & new, Brit cars & Yank Tanks, custom & road plus a few rat rods… Excellent! Pretty good for three quid too.

LM500, Mantara & Mantis.
Nice to be parked near this US beauty. There were quite a few US cars from the 40s onwards.
Heskin Hall & the only bit of lawn without a car parked on it!
This parked up in front of us. Looks a scream. (Sorry!)

‘Proper organised’. While I forgot a chair, some people remembered… Well, everything! Coffee & Hot Dogs in the sunshine.

A great shout from Debbie Morrison. Some discussion on taking the cars to Tatton Park & Oulton Park later this year. In the meantime perhaps we will do a few more local car meets.

Mileage

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So the start of another year & I am hoping things run smoothly with the Mantis in 2025. The pennies are rapidly running out but it would be marvellous to go back to Le Mans with both of the children in the next year or two (not both at the same time, obviously…) I would like to use the car a bit more this year (working from home has killed my commute. Who knew I would miss a four mile drive crawling along the A556 at 5 mph & never getting above third gear!). This begs the question, how many miles am I doing. Cue some analysis of mileage based on MOT records (which unfortunately don’t go back past 2005 so I don’t have them for the first five years of ownership. However I bought the car in 2000 with 18K on the clock).

Here we go…

In other news… Tickets bought & accommodation booked for the Concours of Elegance 2025 in September. Always something I look forward to – an amazing venue, the revolving set of beautiful cars each year, & a very pleasant group of Marcos owners in attendance. What’s not to like!

Winter jacket

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A nice autumnal run up to Wigan with my daughter to collect my first ever car cover. Don’t tell, but this previously graced the Morrison⁩s LM before they went the Coupe route & fitted a monster of a rear wing, thus rendering this surplus to requirements!

A decent, heavyweight indoor cover which I think looks rather good.

Loving the badge at the front 
Yes, the garage gets used for all the normal stuff, not just to house the Mantis!

So… 2024 proved to be as eventful as ever when it comes to owning my Marcos. Somewhat frustrating to be finishing the year with the throttle cable not quite right, but I guess that is something for next year’s ‘To do’ list. I wonder what new ways our lovely government will find to take money off us. The sacred cow of ‘Net zero’ of course continues to be an open goal for penalising car owners. That said, if the Treasury are going to screw motorists in new & exciting ways, perhaps they would consider road tax based on mileage (I doubt I do 1500 annually now) or car weight (1093kgs or thereabouts). Who knows?!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, dear reader.

Pavlova at Tatton

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So… Back at Tatton Park for the first time in five years. See my Blog entries from back then as to the whole kerfuffle, but CMI aka Club Marcos International are doing both days this weekend so hats off to Debbie M for making that happen. She is far more tolerant (& organised) than me!

What happened to the much sexier sounding “Passion for Power”?

Sadly The Swan in Bucklow Hill has not survived Covid, so meet up at 0915 was at the adjacent BP garage instead. There was some early excitement upon our arrival on-site when some cheeky blighter in an old Jag refused to move from the spot he had pinched in our club plot. There was even some swearing! (You could say the owner was “an F Type”!). Anyway they eventually moved when both Morrison⁩s growled at them.

No Jags allowed!

Alas, in all the manoeuvring to position the LM in the hijacked spot, a mysterious purple bag got run over by Darren ( & not once, but twice). “So what?” I hear you cry… Well it contained one of Debbie’s legendary Pavlovas. Fortunately no harm was done & I avoided the ignominy of having to eat it out of the grass. Jolly nice it was too.

The last minute quick wash seemed to have paid off.

Five Marcos cars today: a couple of Mantaras, Alan’s 1800, D&D’s Purple Beast/LM & of course my Mantis. Then four tomorrow, including the three cars overnighting. The day was pretty cloudy which meant smaller crowds, but there was plenty of interest & lots of photos taken.

Ready for bed.

An ex-IBM colleague & a couple of friends from the MR2 club popped over to say hello, which was nice. To top it all off, the dodgy band in the beer tent were a Stray Cats / Rockabilly cover band & not bad either. A decent return to Tatton Park then. Next stop… Hampton Court Palace!

CMI Rally 2024 Part 1: “No plan survives contact with the enemy”.

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So this weekend is the CMI Annual Rally. Hurrah! However, the Mantis is still down at Chariots having passed the world’s most expensive MOT (inside joke) so I have jumped on a train from South Manchester to Lewes & picked the car up. So far so good. I need to be at Redline Sportscars around 1030 Saturday morning for the start of the day’s CMI rally agenda. Redline is a good three hours drive from Clayhill, & as I am only able to pick the car up after 1900, the cunning plan is to drive the car about halfway from Lewes, then get some zeds in a B&B in Shedfield. After an awesome breakfast, it will be back on the road first thing with a view to arriving at Redline in good time.

That was the plan. And it was a good plan. Splendid even. What actually happened however was that less than an hour in, the throttle cable snapped whilst the car was in the overtaking lane of the M27. After a few seconds wondering where the pedal had gone, realisation dawned & I managed to coast onto the hard shoulder. After registering the breakdown on The AA app, a local garage turned up to recover the car to Sainsbury’s car park which is where I am writing this at 0215 in the morning. Unbelievable. And as of 15 minutes ago, they are advising that they can’t get a recovery vehicle to me until between 0800 & 1000 later this morning (Saturday). That’s about 12 hours after I broke down.

The AA, you suck!!!

Corrosion on the throttle cable, leading it to snap.

Getting my chariot MOTd

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Well, more accurately, getting the Mantis MOT’d by Chariots. Up at 0500 today to drive down to drop the car off with Jay Sherwin at Chariots. 200 miles & five uneventful hours later, I had arrived. Rather earlier than expected actually, as I had factored in ‘Marcos time’ (this consists of waiting for The AA, or ‘phoning a friend’) but it wasn’t needed. Yay! Cue a discussion with Jay around what needs doing (MOT but also LSD front seal, chassis protection, bushes, suspension check blah blah).

The car park was (very) full!

Then dropped off to Lewes Station for the five hour journey home. Fingers crossed no expensive findings & I am back to collect the car in the next few weeks.

Blog V3.0

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So, after the first generation ‘diary’ of owning a Mantis, hosted as basic Web pages on thequiffster.com site way back in 2000, then moving to the second generation WordPress site at blog.thequiffster.com, we are now at the third generation of this record of owning a Marcos Mantis sports car, hosted on the newly acquired marcos-mantis.blog domain. Hopefully this will improve the search engine rankings & drive a few more visitors here. Whilst it can be very therapeutic to post, I do like to think some bugger is actually reading this every now & then. 🤔🤣

Hang ’em high

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After a little negotiation & some saving, I have now purchased the picture of my Mantis that adourned the MOC stand at this year’s Classic Car Show at the NEC. It’s an interesting combination of a photograph & arty ‘touching up’. The detail is very good close up, with the wheels coming out particularly well. Not too bad given the pictures were taken on a very grey, drizzly day.