Tag Archives: Marcos Mantis

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.

Christmas Blast for 23

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Not having been in the Mantis for a few weeks, the fantastic clear blue skies of Boxing Day 2023 were too good an opportunity to miss, so after press-ganging my daughter into coming along for the ride, it was off out into the Cheshire lanes for a very pleasant drive out.

A good few things still needing to be done on the car, with future funding sources unclear, but for the time being it was just nice to get out. Given how infrequently I am now driving the car, with negligible commuting & other demands on the old bank balance, I really must try & get a dash cam sorted for 2024 so I can get some driving footage. An aide memoire for the car when the grey cells start failing might be rather handy!

What else for next year then? Well the chatter at the Marcos Christmas Dinner was that we might go to the Youngtimers event at Gawsworth Hall on the second May bank holiday as a group, rather than a independent owners. Other than last year, this was not something I have been previously available for as I am normally at the Hay (Book) Festival with my son, however sadly he has grown up & looks to be elsewhere from now on. We will probably continue to gather on the Sunday of the Oulton Park Gold Cup as our NW race-based meet. The big news perhaps is that we may consider going back to Tatton Park, which we attended for over 25 years before falling out with the new owners, Morton Events, over their ill-informed & ill-advised insistence that we attend on two days across the show weekends. Hopefully after five years running the Tatton Parks shows they now understand that owners clubs of low volume, rare sportscars can’t necessarily get the vehicle numbers to cover more than one day. We will see….

Concours of Elegance 2023

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A very enjoyable Sunday at the Concours of Elegance, held once again at the ever impressive Hampton Court Palace.

I am actually taller than this suggests…
A classic ‘rose between two thorns’ picture, surely? 
A reminder that as well as the cars, Hampton Court Palace is rather splendid in its own right!
The Marcos Mantis 2+2 was voted car of the show by the Classic & Sportscar magazine voters. The commentators seemed rather bemused.
2023 saw Marcos placed to the right of the palace.

Ulez

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What a monumental fuckwit Sadiq Khan is. If you’re going to create a completely bullshit tax to get more money into your Inner London coffers to spend on your divisive policies, at least spend taxpayers money on a decent payment website. What a bag of spanners the user experience is…

A good trip down to the White Hart Hotel with the ever entertaining Doug in the passenger seat. Travelling down from Manchester with the Morrisons, sadly still without their LM which, having been converted to a coupe, is still awaiting paint. As ever, nice to see the Essex mob again, sadly without Geoff now.

As the owner of an “ordinary” Mantis, I am honoured to be in the presence of a supercharged Mantis at the White Hart Hotel today. 🤣😂🤣 Yes RJP, you know who you are!

MOT already?!

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Time flies. MOT time & a very welcome pass! As usual the chaps at Altrincham Tyre and Exhaust were brilliant & took the time to point a few things out that I might want to look at sooner rather than later. Mainly wear & tear on the rear bushes, & suspension.

Also less than 1300 miles last year. Food for thought.

Gawsworth Youngtimers

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Battery changed, car working. Chance conversation with a neighbour & it was off to the Youngtimers event at Gawsworth Hall on the last May Bank Holiday.

What a fantastic venue. No stalls or vendors, just cars parked around the amazing Gawsworth Hall itself. Plenty of nice motors (Ferrari etc) but also many less exotic classics. Everyone was up for a good chat in the sunshine.

Never having taken the Mantis to Gawsworth before, I was intrigued to be directed to the Chamomile Lawn, which turned out to be a great spot near the Panthers & Corvettes. Paul & Gilly, seasoned attendees, found me in their Mantula so we had a Marcos stand… Kind of! 🤣