Beefed-up Farbio still in demand

A year ago I brought news of the Farbio GTS, a great-looking British sports car with a fantastic chassis but an engine that could handle more than the 262bhp it offered. Now it has been supercharged to 410bhp, and, in a car weighing little more than a tonne, performance is vivid. The result is a car with electrifying acceleration yet a surprising degree of civility. It’s spacious and offers all the navigation, Bluetooth and electronica you need to command credibility these days, yet its claimed 3.7sec 0-60mph time feels conservative to me.

True, the price is a breathtaking £94,000, which makes it more expensive than an Aston Martin V8 Vantage or Porsche 911 Turbo, but does include amazing carbon-fibre wheels, weighing just 7kg a corner and doing wonders for unsprung weight.

Farbio boss Chris Marsh is not selling too many in the UK at present, but demand from around the world is more than enough to maintain production at the 50 units a year he needs to make the business worthwhile.

I hope it stays that way: credit crunch or not, the Farbio GTS400 deserves to survive.