New GT in the Marlin pipeline and 5EXi adds VAG power
Posted by Madabout News on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 12:46 PM |
 Having decided to become a lifestyle business focusing on racing and low volume sports car production to order, Marlin’s decision to change business tack certainly proved to be fortuitous timing in lieu of the credit crunch and following recession – which sadly we now all know about only to well.
This change has indeed left Marlin in a very strong position to continue not only to produce complete cars and kits, but also has enabled them to develop a whole new sporting model which is expected to be released onto the market early next year.
The new car – as yet unnamed, not only incorporates all the technical and mechanical improvements developed directly from campaigning their successful factory specced EXi’s in wide spread competition for the last three seasons, but also has some very radical and innovative features which will enable Marlin to raise their sporting game to a whole new ballpark.
Marlin state, 'Without giving too much away at this stage, we can say that the new car is an ultra modern GT with a greatly improved aero dynamic package. It is anticipated that the slick and comfort providing hard top will also be capable of removal for those occasions where an open sports car is preferred.
The full racing version will be produced initially, then arduously track and race tested before the road model will be finalised.'
5EXi Developments add VAG power
Ever conscious of the need to keep customers costs down and performance and reliability up. Mark Matthews – engineering director at Marlin, has developed new installation packages which allow fitment of a superb range of robust high performance engines from the VW/Audi group.
These fuel injected 1.8litre engines - as fitted to VW, Audi, Seat, Octavia and Skoda, feature five valves per cylinder and are available in various guises from 150bhp to 310+bhp, plus five and six speed gearbox options.
The hot package currently is the BAM blocked engines which will chip effortlessly, keeping the standard ECU’s, to well over 310bhp and is in fact the version that Marlin have been campaigning and developing in their factory EXi race team cars all season at the GT championships held at Castle Combe. Racing against the likes of Radicals, Ferraris, Porsches and Subaru’s.
So now it is possible to build a 5EXi with any of these readily available units, plus of course the previously popular Honda Civic range.
The latest generation 5EXi also features a new recently race developed front suspension package, and like all previous Marlin technical developments which have been inspired by racing their sports cars, these are available to all customers as retro-fit-able packages.
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