Noble M600

The M600 is a function-first shape and makes no attempt at drama. It is low, 1,120mm tall, 4,360mm long on a 2,540mm wheelbase, with a wide track and none of the sculptural theatre that Italian rivals were using to justify their prices. Lee Noble drew it and the priority is visible: air in, air out, cooling packages fed, downforce made without a wing that dominates the car. The interior is where the argument is made. Noble cited the Ferrari F40 as the reference and then followed through, deleting climate control and infotainment entirely. What remains is twin hide upholstery and gloss carbon fibre trim as standard, with leather, suede or Alcantara and knurled wood or carbon as choices. The rotary boost selector sits in the middle of it, a deliberate echo of Ferrari's manettino but doing something more consequential. The signature detail is the traction control switch under its fighter-jet guard, a piece of hardware that tells you more about the car's intent than any styling line does.

The M600 has no factory competition record, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of ambition. GT racing by 2010 ran on homologated packages that required a manufacturer to build road cars in numbers, supply customer teams and fund a season of development. Noble was about twenty people building perhaps thirty cars, and a homologation route was never realistically available. The proving happened in the press instead, which for a car of this era is an honest substitute. evo ran the M600 at its 2009 Car of the Year and placed it third, behind the Lotus Evora and the Porsche 911 GT3 and ahead of a Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4, having recorded 205mph at Bruntingthorpe. The Stig's 1:17.7 around the Top Gear circuit put it fourth on that board at the time, above cars with entire racing departments behind them. Noble's own engineering lineage runs through kit and track cars rather than circuit programmes, and the M600 is best read as the endpoint of that tradition: a road car built to racing priorities that never needed a race entry to prove the point.

For a car built in tiny numbers by a company most people cannot name, the M600 has an unusually solid television record. It appeared twice on Top Gear in the UK. In series 14 Jeremy Clarkson drove it and reported back approvingly, and the Stig's 1:17.7 power lap put it among the fastest cars the programme had timed. In series 18 Richard Hammond took a left-hand drive car through Italy, suffered a clutch failure that damaged the gearbox, and praised the car anyway, which is the sort of endorsement money cannot buy. The American version of the programme later recorded 215mph in one. It has a second life in games. The M600 features in Forza Motorsport 7, where it was the required car for a 2018 Forzathon event, and in Forza Horizon 4 as the subject of a weekly challenge built around hand-built supercars. Beyond that its fame is enthusiast-deep rather than public-wide. The M600 is a car people who care about cars know about, and almost nobody else does.

The M600 rewards an owner who understands what was deliberately left out. There is no ABS and no stability control, so wet roads and cold tyres are managed by the driver rather than by software, and most owners treat the Road setting as the default for exactly that reason. That is the car working as designed, not a fault. The engine's origins help. The block traces to the Yamaha-built Volvo V8 used in the XC90 and S80, so the architecture is understood, but the Noble installation is heavily reworked with its own turbochargers, injectors and MoTeC management, and it is that calibration rather than the hardware that needs a specialist. Clutches are the known wear item, and the Top Gear failure in Italy is the famous example. Everything else is a small-volume car problem. Body panels, glass and trim were made in batches of a few dozen. Noble Automotive still trades and now builds the M500, so the factory that made the parts is still answering the phone, which is more than owners of most thirty-car supercars can say.