Invicta S1 project collapses

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The Invicta S1 supercar project has ground to a halt.
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Neil Dowling

Contributing Journalist

1 min read

The Invicta S1 project has ground to a halt after its parent company collapsed under a $75,000 debt. The UK-built S1 was to be a $300,000 hand-built sports car using a 4.6-litre or 5.0-litre V8s from Ford SVT.

Customers could tune the engine up to 445kW. When announced in 2003, the S1 was claimed to have the world's first one-piece carbon-fibre body over its space-frame with integrated rollcage.

It also had AP Racing brakes with six-pot calipers, a Brembo independent handbrake system, double wishbone suspension that was fully adjustable and a BTR Hydratrak limited-slip differential.

The recent closure of the marque is the third time the Invicta name has collapsed in its 87-year history.

Invicta – ironically Latin for ‘invincible’ – was launched in 1925 with a focus on sporty performance, and closed 10 years later with founder Noel Macklin going on to start the Railton brand.

Invicta was restarted in 1946 and this time lasted five years before being bought by AFN (best known for the Frazer Nash brand).

The Invicta S1 was seeded in the marque’s third start out of the blocks about 10 years ago, but it looks like third time unlucky again.

Photo of Neil Dowling
Neil Dowling

Contributing Journalist

GoAutoMedia Cars have been the corner stone to Neil’s passion, beginning at pre-school age, through school but then pushed sideways while he studied accounting. It was rekindled when he started contributing to magazines including Bushdriver and then when he started a motoring section in Perth’s The Western Mail. He was then appointed as a finance writer for the evening Daily News, supplemented by writing its motoring column. He moved to The Sunday Times as finance editor and after a nine-year term, finally drove back into motoring when in 1998 he was asked to rebrand and restyle the newspaper’s motoring section, expanding it over 12 years from a two-page section to a 36-page lift-out. In 2010 he was selected to join News Ltd’s national motoring group Carsguide and covered national and international events, launches, news conferences and Car of the Year awards until November 2014 when he moved into freelancing, working for GoAuto, The West Australian, Western 4WDriver magazine, Bauer Media and as an online content writer for one of Australia’s biggest car groups. He has involved himself in all aspects including motorsport where he has competed in everything from motocross to motorkhanas and rallies including Targa West and the ARC Forest Rally. He loves all facets of the car industry, from design, manufacture, testing, marketing and even business structures and believes cars are one of the few high-volume consumables to combine a very high degree of engineering enlivened with an even higher degree of emotion from its consumers.
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