Ascari

Ascari Cars Ltd was a low-volume sports car manufacturer based in Blandford Forum, Dorset, England. The company took its name from the Argentine racing driver Alberto Ascari and built high-performance coupés intended for both road use and competition.

The marque's principal model, the Ascari FGT, was designed by Lee Noble as a luxury road car with strong motorsport pedigree. A prototype version of the car competed at Le Mans, where it finished third in its class. This early example used a centrally mounted, modified Chevrolet Corvette V8 engine producing around 600 brake horsepower.

For production, the FGT was fitted with a 4.6-litre BMW V8 developing 350 brake horsepower, though buyers could also specify a Hartge-tuned 4.7-litre unit producing 400 brake horsepower, or a milder 300 brake horsepower variant. The car featured a steel tube spaceframe chassis with riveted and bonded aluminium panelling and a full roll cage, all clothed in a glassfibre coupé body. Independent suspension by double wishbones with co-axial springs was used at both front and rear, reflecting the car's racing-derived engineering.

A lightweight derivative known as the Ascari Écosse weighed just 1,250 kilograms and was claimed capable of exceeding 200 miles per hour (320 km/h), with a 0–60 mph time of 4.1 seconds. By 1998, ten examples of the Ascari had been completed, making the marque a rare and specialist producer of high-performance British sports cars.