This is a truly rare opportunity to own a singularly unique and special vehicle.

The Noble Ascari F/GT is the product of decades of experience by famed auto designer Lee Noble. Bred on the racetrack but built for the streets, the Ascari is an aesthetic masterpiece. Elegant, organic lines highlight a shape that both cheats the wind and inspires the soul.

The Ascari story is an interesting one with several touchstones to greatness. Lee Noble’s history of designing and building terrifically competitive race-cars in Europe is fabled. From his earliest days with the MidTech all the way through the Ultima, which became so successful in British GT Series, and dominated for so long against the ranks that included the world’s great marques, that it was finally asked to go home. Soon thereafter, an entire spec series featuring the Ultima was created called the Sport 3000. Because it remained so popular, Lee sold the rights to the Ultima to Ted Marlowe and they are still in production today.

This car is so significant because it was the gateway to several other fine sports cars. Due to the design success of the Ascari F/GT, Lee Noble went on to design and produce the highly celebrated M-12, M-12 GTO, M-400, and M-14 receiving worldwide praise from the automotive news industry. Additionally, Lee was instrumental in the development of Ascari Cars Ltd, a company that put the Ascari into limited production and renamed it “Ecosse”. Their follow-up model was the KZ-1 and it shared much of it’s underpinnings and design with the original Ascari. Subsequently Ascari Cars launched the A-10, which was featured on the cover of the duPont Registry. And, of course, one most recognize the Noble M-500 & M-600 which are produced by the company that bears his name. All these great cars owe their origins to the Ascari F/GT, which many say is the best of the bunch.

Lee Noble has done design work for several major European carmakers and was also closely involved in the development of the McLaren F-1. In fact, Lee had designed a chassis and supplied two prototypes to McLaren that were used exclusively as the “test mules’ for the F-1’s power-train development and testing. With minor enhancements, this was to become the chassis of the Ascari.

The car being offered here is one of only three in the US and this is the only US spec prototype. It is equipped with catalytic converters, evaporative gas containment, four OX sensors, (two cat-monitors) and an OBDII compliant ECU. This car is meticulously finished in Artic Silver on Deep Black interior.

The Ascari is a two door, two seat, mid-engine sports coupe. The body is a single piece, non-stressed member made of a GRP three-dimensional composite material. The bodies were pressure cured in the same autoclave that produces the main body tubs for F-1 race cars. The rear wing, rear valence panel, dashboard and interior components are constructed in high strength carbon-fibre. The chassis is a rigid space-frame fabricated in Swedish seamless, high carbon steel. Under stress testing, the chassis showed less bend deflection than any other production vehicle. There are progressively deformable crumple zones in the front, rear and sides as well as full CDS roll over protection. All lens are DOT rated as is all the safety glass.

The front and rear suspensions consist of fully custom, unequal length, double wishbones. The one-piece uprights are cast in an aircraft aluminum alloy and the H&R sprigs and Bilstein coil-over-shocks are fully adjustable in height and valving. Rack and pinion steering and an adjustable sway bar complete the front-end. On all four corners there are 13”, ventilated rotors and four piston Alcon brake calipers.

The engine is mounted mid-ship and is coupled to a five-speed G50 Porsche transaxle. Power is generated by a 4.6 liter, 32 valve, all alloy V-8 producing approximately 400 HP. The engine was provided by Ford SVO (Special Vehicle Operations). Ford has a history of being an engine and component supplier for many high-end limited production vehicles, such as Carroll Shelby (A/C Cobras), DeTomaso (Pantera), Mangusta (Qvale) and Panoz (Roadster and Esperante) to mention only a few. Ford was impressed by the Ascari and looked forward to a partnership with Noble on the Ascari. This first engine was a hand-built 4.6 liter, 4 cam modular V-8 that was only available on the limited edition Cobra Mustangs. Ford had blue printed and massaged this engine to get a bit more power than was available to the Cobras. This engine performed so well that it became the foundation of Ford’s performance engine base. Much of the basic engine design was the root of the new generation of Aston Martin’s V-12 program.  In the Ascari, custom designed, equal length runner, ceramic coated exhaust manifolds, custom made Bassani stainless steel mufflers, free-flow cats and very favorable NVH ("Noise, Vibration and Harshness") makes for very civil idle characteristics and a throaty roar when driven spiritedly.

 

For those who would like to club race the Ascari or fully convert it to a racer there is no car more competent than this in race trim. Many hours of development of the Ascari were spent on a test track (Bruntingthorpe in England) and when a pre-production version was handed over to a McLaren factory test driver for track testing after one hour he returned to the pits and said “Change nothing”.

The creature comforts include:
• Power windows, power locks, power mirrors, remote keyless entry/locking
• Full climate control
• Alcantara finished dashboard, full glove leather and German velour interior
• 250 watt, 8 speaker CD stereo sound system
• VDO white faced, analog gauges on a carbon-fiber dash face.
• Xenon driving lamps and pop-up headlights
• F-1 style, column mounted controls
• Leather wrapped, Volanti steering wheel
• Fully adjustable, leather sports seats
• Acoustic and thermal insulation

 

The car has always been stored in-doors, under a custom cover. All the fluids and filters have just been replaced as have the battery and fuel pump as a precaution. The car has zero road miles and has never been titled. This is 1 of 3 in the US.