1970 Bolwell Mark 7 Coupe

Founded by brothers Campbell, Winston and Graeme Bolwell in 1962, this home-grown company produced some of the best sports cars ever seen in this country and their distinctively styled cars are highly sought after by collectors today. The first model produced in quantity by the fledgling company was the Mark IV, with over 200 built in component kit form - the buyer was left to supply and choose the type of running gear and do final assembly. The low-slung bodywork was made from fibreglass, in either a gullwing hardtop or roadster styles, with the Ford Cortina 1600 the most popular choice of motive power. Although early Bolwells used a separate tubular space-frame chassis, the design was updated into a stronger, lighter (and cheaper to manufacture) monocoque on the Mark IVB. With the Mark V, Bolwell moved towards serious road car production, and Holden's six-cylinder motor became the preferred engine. Following on from the one-off sports-racing Mark VI, Bolwell's next road-going model, the Mark VII, was a more mature car in every way. Following Lotus practice, the car had a backbone chassis of folded sheet metal, with sophisticated suspension and a very attractive body strongly influenced by contemporary exotics like the Jaguar E-Type and the Ferrari GTO. Between 1967 and 1972, Bolwell turned out 400 Mark VII cars, some of them sold as complete turn-key cars from the factory but the majority were still sold in kit form. Bolwell went on to build a Ford V8-powered car, the Nagari (or Mark VIII) and the name lives on with the latest 2008 incarnation of the Nagari.