Light fantastic

NOBLE M500 PROTOTYPE

- Ollie Marriage

You might dimly remember the Noble M600. Come to think of it, Noble itself is hardly a household name, so let's start there. It sprung to prominence in the early Noughties, producing mid-engined sports cars with remarkable chassis fluency. Being a British cottage industry marque it then stuttered before coming back a decade ago with a supercar, the aforementioned M600. Again one with a supple chassis, but this time the twin-turbocharged Ford V6 had given way to twin-turbo 4.4-litre VolvoYamaha V8 and 350bhp had become 650.

It was mighty. The looks were perhaps a touch simplistic, so Noble only ever sold a couple of dozen. Shame. It's one of those cars that's much more than the sum of its not very exotic parts. It was terrifically, thunderously fast, chattered with feedback, but wasn't the sort of car that held your hand. You needed to know what you were doing. And being carbon-bodied it was also expensive to produce.