If you are not a Marcos enthusiast, past or present, and are viewing this epic tale by accident, I offer my condolences . If you are a Marcos enthusiast hopefully you will recognise the various references to Marcos literature and personalities.

Why Now ?

A picture of the car has been used on the Marcos Forum as the avatar of 'raceply', the German racer and collector of 1960s historic sports cars, Klaus Tweddell

What, you might ask is the Marcos connection, and why did Klaus choose the Tavenor as his forum avatar, when he is fortunate enough to own two complete Marcos Fastback cars, to whit 3 PLY, the blue drop-nosed car with which he appeared at the Marcos 50^th anniversary bash, and 800 GUC, the green and gold car with the 'standard' bonnet which he raced at the 2009 Goodwood Revival meeting ?.

To be strictly accurate the car as pictured above in its original livery and with its (genuine) original YJH 449F registration number should be thought of as the Tavenor Mk 2b.

In Mk 2a format it was completed and road registered at the end of 1967, and first raced at Brands Hatch at the then traditional Boxing Day meeting in the same year.

It was built as an open sports-racer intended for international long-distance racing as a Prototype conforming to Group 6 of Appendix J of the FIA regulations for 1968. ( To put that in context, the same designation applied to such varied cars as the Alfa Romeo TZ, Chevron B8, Porsche 917, Ford F3L and many one-offs ). In mid-season I made some minor changes which included converting it to the coupe as rebuilt by Klaus, from which point on I labelled it as Mk 2b

The chassis no is 6201, made up from group 6, mark 2, chassis 01. With great optimism I thought there might be a second chassis to follow.

The chassis plate bears the legend “Built by RTN Motors”, which was a business name I registered in order to obtain parts and materials at 'trade' prices – and guess what, the T stands for Tavenor.