A British supercar is always going to raise some interest and Leicester based British manufacturer Noble has always had an eye for a good looking classic design with just the right amount of extreme to make it stand out – check out the M600.
Now Noble has taken everyone by surprise and shown us the M500 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed; a little something they describe as a ‘user friendly’ supercar and the veritable smaller brother to the M600.
It is often said by marketeers angling for your business that orange is perceived as ‘cheap’ while the likes of royal blues and reds is perceived as ‘expensive’. Well, it seems that no one has told the supercar manufacturers – a group of automotive builders that are definitely not providing cheap product and tend to use orange as the go-to colour to showcase their pride and joy at the shows – as if they need to make such cars stand out any more than they already do.
The Noble M500 looks fantastic resplendent in its orange coat, but I suspect it would look good in any colour such is the company’s ability to craft a classic and traditional shape into a very modern sports car. It certainly looks refined and has a bit of a Porsche 911 or a Nissan 370Z about it, yet Noble Managing Director Peter Boutwood says that he only sketched the idea for the M500 around six months ago with the foam model only preceding the car’s showing at Goodwood by one day – that’s cutting it fine.
The Noble M500 will be a 500bhp 3-litre V6 piece of fun. With rear-wheel drive and an engine sat in the middle, handling should be able to keep the lucky driver on his or her toes and put a smile on the face. The use of a Ford-based V6 will make sure that the M500 slips below the overseas tax threshold that the 4.4-litre V8 powered M600 currently suffers from, thus potentially opening the M500 up to more sales. It will be far cheaper too. Indeed, Boutwood has said that he’d love to sell more Noble sports cars and the new M500 might just boost the company profile towards that goal.
The M500 will forsake the use of ubiquitous carbon-fibre in place of aluminium for the chassis and good old traditional fibreglass for the body, making sure the Noble M500 is easier and quicker to put together – all pointing in the direction of more sales.
No idea of price at the moment as it’s very early days for the Noble M500 (it’s not even on their website yet). While it can be deemed entry-level as far as supercars go, don’t expect it to be selling for less than a 6-figure sum sometime during the latter part of 2019.
Image credit: TopGear.com
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