In 1975 Harold Dermott and his company, D&H Fibreglass Techniques of Greenfield, near Oldham, took over production of the Mini Marcos from Marcos. Its odd looks were dated, so Dermott asked the designer Richard Oakes for a new model, and the Midas was launched at the 1978 Performance Car Show in London. It had a composite body with no separate chassis, using the Mini engine, gearbox and front subframe.
An improved model followed in 1981 with suggestions from Gordon Murray, then designing Brabham Formula One cars, and demand soon outgrew the Oldham workshop, so the company moved to Corby as Midas Cars Ltd. Motor magazine recorded 100 mph, 41.2 mpg and 0-60 mph in 9.9 seconds, and adverts promised it would never rust. In 1985 the Midas Gold was restyled by Oakes, again with Murray’s help on aerodynamics, and adapted to Austin and MG Metro parts. It passed a full crash test so that complete cars could be sold, and a convertible appeared in 1989, but production stopped that March when the Corby works was destroyed by fire.
Pastiche Cars of Rotherham relaunched the range in 1990, before GTM took it over in 1991 and added a K-series Metro-based 2+2 coupé in 1995. A new Midas Cars in Redditch built the Cortez and Excelsior from 2001 until its liquidation in 2003, and from 2004 Alternative Cars Ltd made kits in Clanfield, Oxfordshire.
