Sexy and Not Italian: 1970 Marcos GT3-Liter V6

It was probably 50 or so years ago when I first saw a Marcos. It was a 1/43rd scale model, and I thought it was beautiful, so I bought it for my burgeoning model collection. I’ve seen a few Marcos 1800s in person, but I hadn’t gotten close to one until I moved to Tennessee. That’s where I met Paul Batovsky, who has a small, interesting collection of cars, including a 1970 Marcos. Being able to get up close to the car and to talk to someone who knows a lot about Marcos company history validated my belief that this is one of the sexiest non-Italian cars ever built.

Marcos

It is impossible to separate the story of Marcos the company from that of its founder, Jeremy George Weston Marsh (aka Jem). While there are many others who had a part in making Marcos cars what they were, it was Jem Marsh who made it happen. He wrote his autobiography, “Making My Marque”, in 2009, and it is an incredible story of focus on his dream. Scattered through his book are a few “School Reports. ”A final one, found on the book’s dust cover, is labeled the “Headmaster’s Final Report. ”It is dated Summer 1946 when Jem was 16 years 3 months old. It reads, “George (Jem) certainly possesses some practical capacity and I believe fair intelligence, but he has not put his back into his work and he may find that the lack of a school certificate will handicap him in the days to come. ”One had to wonder what the headmaster would have thought about what Marsh accomplished in the half century after he left school. He certainly would not have expected Steve Copley to write in the Forward to Marsh’s autobiography that “With men like Colin Chapman and Eric Broadley he played a major role in the post-war revolution that make Britain the world headquarters for sports cars and laid the foundation for a supremacy in racing that still endures. ”Sounds like Marsh had put his back into his work and that the lack of a school certificate proved to be no handicap.