Quick catch up.
2001-11-18 by Mark Saxby
First off, as far as I know, the factory didn't put wooden dashes in any pre-72 cars. Lots of people installed burr walnut dashes in the post-80s kits and a lot of later cars (Mantaras, LM500s, etc) had them. It's an easy retro-fit, so I expect the walnut dash (and interior) are later restorations. Secondly, I was lucky enough to visit Paul Stephens of Paul Stephens Cars last Thursday. Paul deals in recent sportscars, but specialises in Marcos cars. He recently raced one of the NCK LM600s at Brands Hatch. During my visit, I was able to drive a Mantaray Spyder (with a 4.6 litre Rover V8) and a supercharged Mantis coupe (reputedly developing around 470 BHP from it's Mustang derived engine). Needless to say the Mantis was incredible, but I didn't win the lottery this week, so I've not yet been able to buy it. I'll be putting a more detailed report on my visit on my site, but if you want to look at Paul's cars, the URL is www.paulstephens.net. Cheers, Mark