1968 Marcos 1600 GT 🔥
The plywood chassis was no gimmick. Frank Costin, who helped develop the wooden de Havilland Mosquito fighter during WWII, co-founded Marcos with Jem Marsh in 1959 and applied those aircraft construction techniques to this sports car.
The result was a 386-part bonded plywood structure that proved competitive in British club racing despite skepticism about wood.
The GT’s low-slung fiberglass body featured a distinctly futuristic design. Its sleek profile earned it the same “Flying Splinter” nickname used for the Mosquito. The fixed seats accommodated different driver heights through an adjustable pedal box rather than sliding rails.
By 1968, the 1600 GT used Ford’s 1.6-liter Crossflow inline-four engine, a simple design with the intake on one side of the cylinder head and exhaust on the other. This replaced the earlier Volvo engines to reduce costs. Steel chassis versions eventually replaced the plywood construction, making original wooden-chassis examples highly collectible among enthusiasts.
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