Costin Sports Car cars for sale
About these listings
Every Costin Sports Car listed on MotorLoop.
Overview
The Costin Amigo is a lightweight British sports car built between 1970 and 1972 by Costin Automotive Racing Products, designed by the aerodynamicist Frank Costin. Its defining feature is structural: the chassis is made of timber and plywood, an approach Costin brought from aircraft work and used repeatedly through his career.
Very few were built and the car is a footnote in most histories, but the designer is not. Costin’s aerodynamic work sits behind several of the most significant British racing cars of the 1950s and 1960s.
History
Frank Costin came out of the aeronautical industry, working for several firms before settling at de Havilland. He designed bodies for early Lotus racing cars including the Mk 8, which led to the Vanwall bodies; the Lotus Elite, the Lotus Eleven, the Vanwall VW1 and VW6 streamliner and the Vauxhall Firenza Baby Bertha touring car all carry his work.
In 1959 he co-founded Marcos in Dolgellau, north Wales with Jem Marsh of Speedex — the name is a contraction of the two surnames, and the wooden-chassis principle went with him. The Amigo, at the end of his career, was his own car built to his own ideas.