Noble's homegrown supercar

published 11 February 2011

Remember the Noble M600 the British supercar launched in 2009 that promptly joined the 220mph-plus club? Well, forget it, says Andrew Frankel in The Sunday Times. Everything you read about the car was based on a prototype. Here, at last, is the car you can actually buy the M600 Carbon.

Gone are the plastic panels, replaced by carbon-fibre, and the interior has been replaced with "one more becoming a car with a £200,000 price tag". What hasn't changed is "the philosophy": it remains an "analogue" car, with no anti-lock braking, traction control or flappy paddles. What you get instead is an unbeatable driving experience.

And phenomenal power too, says Stephen Dobie in Evo. The mid-mounted 4.4-litre V8 engine boasts outputs of 650bhp and 604lb/ft. That, coupled with a sub-1,200kg kerb weight, gives the Noble a 550bhp/ton power-to-weight ratio.

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"That's significantly higher than the Bugatti Veyron's 521bhp/ton, and enough to give the Noble a 0-60mph time of less than 3.0 seconds and a top speed of 225mph. Yet more staggering is an 8.9 second 0-120mph sprint, achieved by Noble's heavier pre-production car."

The car is on sale now, but with a production rate of one a month, it's likely to be Britain's rarest supercar as well as its fastest, says Frankel. "One for the purists."