Frank Costin was an engineer at de Havilland when, in 1954, his brother Mike asked him to design an aerodynamic body for the Lotus Mark VIII. He went on to shape the Vanwall that won the first Formula One constructors’ championship, contributed to Lotus and Lister designs, and co-founded Marcos with Jem Marsh, its name taken from MARsh and COStin, building its cars around wooden chassis like the aircraft he knew.
His Amigo, Auto Project XVIII, was designed to cruise all day at 100 mph below 5,000 rpm, cover 250 miles without refuelling and return 30 mpg. Its chassis was a monocoque of six interconnected torsion boxes in gaboon plywood, bonded with aircraft adhesive and weighing just 187 lb, under a glass-fibre body with a drag coefficient of 0.29. The running gear, including the 2-litre slant-four engine, came mainly from the Vauxhall Victor and VX 4/90, with self-levelling Koni dampers otherwise supplied only to Ferrari.
The project began in 1968 while Costin was in North Wales, moved to Little Staughton in Bedfordshire and finally near Luton, and the car was announced in December 1970 at £3,326. Only eight or nine were built by Costin Automotive Racing Products before production ended in 1972. Costin later designed the TMC Costin and the Costin Sports Roadster.
