The original Marcos Mantis is a sports car

Sports car

A sports car is a small, usually two seat, two door automobile designed for high speed driving and maneuverability....

 produced by the British car company Marcos

Marcos (automobile)

Marcos was a British sports car manufacturer. The name was a combination of founders Jem Marsh and Frank Costin.-History:Marcos was founded in Luton, in Bedfordshire, England, in 1959 by Jem Marsh and Frank Costin. Frank Costin had earlier worked on the De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bombers and...

. It was formally introduced in 1968 though production appears to have got off to a slow start. In February 1971 Marcos announced that the car could now also be purchased in component form, at a domestic market price of £2,425 compared to the recommended retail price of the built version of £3,185. (At this time the V8 Rover 3500

Rover P6

The first P6 used a 2.0 L engine designed specifically for the P6. Although it was announced towards the end of 1963, the car had been in "pilot production" since the beginning of the year, therefore deliveries were able to begin immediately. Original output was in the order of . At the...

 came with a UK sticker price of £2,150 including sales taxes.) 32 examples were produced, with production ending in 1971.

The Mantis name has been used subsequently for models bearing little obvious similarity to the original model. Introduced in 1997, the Mantis GT version is a higher performance version of the Mantis. The name Mantis

Mantis

Mantis is the common name of any insect in the order Mantodea, also commonly known as praying mantises. The word itself means "prophet" in Latin and Greek...

 comes from the mantis

Mantis

Mantis is the common name of any insect in the order Mantodea, also commonly known as praying mantises. The word itself means "prophet" in Latin and Greek...

 insect and is to signify the performance of the Mantis' engine, a supercharged 4.6 litre

Litre

pic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...

 V8 producing 506 bhp and 452 lbft of torque allowing the Mantis to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds and reach a top speed of 179 mi/h. The car features power assisted rack and pinion steering as well as AP Vented disc brakes which have a diameter of 284 mm (front) and 240 mm (rear).