Designed to reflect speed and beauty with exquisite flowing lines, the Farbio GTS brings to reality the merger of a road car with a racing pedigree. The latest technological advances are encompassed with dynamic styling and superb road holding.

Now in production at our factory near Bath, the stunning Sports Car has a full carbon fibre body, space framed chassis, complete flat underfloor (incorporating a rear diffuser), giving the GTS an exceptional aerodynamic grip level. It has an understated elegance combined with style, giving a truly refined sports car with outstanding performance.

GTS customers will be able to tour in comfort with the spacious, ergonomic interior, with fully adjustable Sparco reclining seats allowing for a 6’6” driver. The controls have an easy accessibility with the touch-screen featuring satellite navigation, air conditioning and sound system as standard. Long distance touring is made easier due to the 76 litre fuel tank and 220 litre boot capacity, which can incorporate a full size set of golf clubs or luggage.

Farbio Sports Cars has the benefit of an £11 million order book for the next three years with customers from the UK, USA, Scandinavia and Thailand. Our UK waiting list is currently 8 months at the time of going to press.

The Farbio GTS and Supercharged GTS

The route followed when developing the Farbio range was clearly defined: a powerful engine, high-tech space framed steel chassis and carbon fibre body, race inspired seating, racing brakes, advanced aerodynamics incorporating a flat underfloor with rear diffuser, all these ingredients combined with a beautifully styled body.

With the addition of an exceptionally spacious and refined interior, excellent all round visibility... you have the breathtaking Farbio GTS.

GTS

The normally aspirated Farbio GTS comprises of a bespoke induction and exhaust system and along with a specially mapped ECU, it can produce an impressive 262bhp. This combined with the lightweight full carbon fibre body shell delivers powerful acceleration. The Farbio GTS also incorporates a flat floor the full length of the car, joining the front splitter and rear diffuser, which provides exceptional downforce giving excellent handling qualities.

With the large fuel tank and lightweight carbon fibre body, touring is made simple and enjoyable.

The boot volume is large enough to fit a standard set of golf clubs, or several pieces of luggage. There is also extra luggage space on the parcel shelf, secured with bespoke luggage straps.

The Farbio GTS can accommodate a 6'6" driver, into our fully adjustable Sparco seats.

Supercharged GTS

The supercharged Farbio GTS comprises of a bespoke induction and exhaust system and along with a specially mapped ECU it can produce an exhilarating 384bhp. This combined with the lightweight full carbon fibre body shell delivers powerful acceleration. The Farbio GTS also incorporates a flat floor the full length of the car, joining the front splitter and rear diffuser, which provides exceptional downforce giving excellent handling qualities.

With the large fuel tank and lightweight carbon fibre body, touring is made simple and enjoyable.

The boot volume is large enough to fit a standard set of golf clubs, or several pieces of luggage. There is also extra luggage space on the parcel shelf, secured with bespoke luggage straps.

The Farbio GTS can accommodate a 6'6" driver, into our fully adjustable Sparco seats.

The Supercharged version of the Farbio GTS combines all of the qualities of the normally aspirated car with a specially tuned bespoke version of the V6 engine and a Rotrex supercharger. The supercharged GTS has added cooling ducts, to accommodate twin intercoolers.

Pocket-Size Supercar From Britain

By John Barker, Contributor Email
Date posted: 01-27-2008


It's not every day you get invited to the workshops of a new British sports-carmaker to drive its first car. But we're in a bit of a panic on this dark November morning in England because Farbio Sports Cars is tucked away off a narrow lane in rural Wiltshire, near Bristol. Good thing we've got satellite navigation.

Finally we're in a smart reception area within a converted barn, not the kind of place where you'd expect to find high technology. But when the door to the spacious workshop opens, we get our first sight of the 2008 Farbio GTS. It's a stunner. Neat and original with some fine detailing, it's not a big car, but it has real presence.

Is the 2008 Farbio GTS finally ready after all these years of promises?

The End of a Long Road
Chris Marsh, the managing director of Farbio, beckons us inside. The shape of the Farbio GTS is all that remains of the Farboud GTS, which began life in Norfolk in 2002 as the vision of Arash Farboud. Rumor has it that the car had been styled by someone who might have been wielding fat marker pens at Lotus. Whatever, it's a fine piece of work that still looks good five years later on the eve of the car's long-awaited launch.

Marsh came from Marcos and Invicta and took on the project in 2004, and he finally took charge with Faroud as a shareholder about a year ago. The Farboud GTS was originally a supercar powered by a 440-horsepower twin-turbo Audi V6 and featured pushrod-operated inboard suspension and carbon-fiber bodywork. Marsh saw the car's future at a lower price and in higher volumes, right in the place in the market once occupied by Noble before it headed upmarket.

"People want reliability, comfort, proper air-conditioning, a quiet cockpit and a good exhaust noise," Marsh says. Achieving this at a price point of $117,000 — less than half as much as the initial plan — required completely reengineering the car. Fortunately Marsh claims that he has 450 orders for the car once he begins production.

Body in Plastic
The shape of the GTS may look like the original but the body is all-new, and fashioned from carbon-fiber, too. Beneath the body is a tubular steel space frame with a built-in roll cage, to which the carbon panels are bonded to enhance structural rigidity. The wheelbase measures 105.3 inches, while the car is 165.9 inches long, 76.4 inches wide and just 46.1 inches high.

The inboard suspension has been replaced by a straightforward double-wishbone independent suspension with coil-over dampers. The biggest change has been the power plant, as the expensive Audi has been replaced by the humble 24-valve, DOHC 3.0-liter Ford Duratec V6, complete with a six-speed gearbox. It's installed transversely, as if it had been plucked directly from a Ford Mondeo. With a new inlet manifold, exhaust system and ECU, the Ford V6 delivers 262 horsepower at 6,400 rpm and 215 pound-feet of torque at 3,000 rpm. The optional Cosworth-engineered supercharged version with a compact Rotrex centrifugal blower increases output to 384 hp.

This is a hand-built development car. The paint is smooth and glossy, the lacquered carbon-fiber surrounds for the rear lights are beautiful and the Khan Design 19-inch aluminium wheels hunker nicely within the wheelwells.

The interior is a great success, too. It features Sparco Milano seats trimmed in the same leather as the fascia and door inserts, and an SPA instrument pack similar to the one used on the Ariel Atom but with metal faces and electric blue markings and needles. Particularly impressive is the large touchscreen that controls the ventilation system and the stereo, and satellite navigation is available as an option.

Down to Business
The driving position is low-slung, with seat, pedals and the Momo steering wheel all aligned, and it's reasonably roomy, too. The view through the windscreen is excellent, a little like an Elise's.

The V6 sounds lusty, idling with a weighty beat overlaid with a treble of valve-gear fizz. Despite the engine's proximity, it's not too loud in the cockpit even when worked hard, yet its gruff, confident exhaust note turns heads on the street. It's gratifying to find that the cable-operated shift linkage works very well, as the action has a nice effort level and the gear engagement is short and positive.

At town speeds the GTS feels spot-on, the ride just the right side of firm and the power-assisted steering perfectly weighted, responsive and consistent. Only the brakes — 13.8-inch vented discs in front and 12.9-inch discs in the rear with four-pot AP Racing calipers all around — take some getting used to, as the top-of-the-pedal bite of these AP Racing pads is rather fierce.

Making the Engine Sing
The first time the throttle hits the carpet in 3rd gear, we feel the drama within this car. The GTS snaps forward with the alertness that is the preserve of either the lightweight or massively powerful. As the V6 hits 4,500 rpm and really fills its lungs, the Farbio pushes on with real conviction. It makes a decent sound, too, though it is perhaps not as enthusiastically pure as you might hope. As the blue-lit needle of the tachometer approaches redline, its color changes to purple and then red.

With only 2,310 pounds to throw around, the Farbio GTS has the same power-to-weight ratio as the new BMW M3 and Porsche 911 Carrera S, and it feels about that quick. Marsh claims this car will get to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds and reach a top speed of 160 mph.

At cruising speed, the GTS feels long-legged and reasonably refined, the sort of car in which you could rack up big mileage without effort. The compromise between ride and handling is impressively resolved, as the chassis impressively rounds off all sorts of pavement pocks, lesions and scars, and yet the tightly damped front end skims along the ground with exciting eagerness.

The steering is very quick and direct, yet the Farbio doesn't feel nervous. The weight distribution is 39 percent front/61 percent rear. It flicks into turns with the agility you'd expect of a light car, staying flat and scrub-free as the 245/35R19 Toyo Proxes T1-R front tires grip the road, and the tail showing little sign of inertia despite packing that V6.

If you find a wet, tight hairpin, as we did, the GTS will demonstrate that it's poised beyond the limit. The torque of the V6 unsticks the 285/35R19 rear tires before the apex, and as the tail gently begins to oversteer you'll find that a relaxed handful of opposite lock steadies the slide. There's no limited-slip rear differential, so if you back off to help arrest the slide, when you pick up the power again the inside rear spins and the tail comes back into line.

Ticking All the Boxes
Dynamically, the Farbio GTS ticks all the boxes and yet doesn't feel like any other car we've driven. Its ride is supple yet closely controlled, it grips like it's on track-day tires (well, it is on track-day tires, actually) and it has keen, direct steering yet doesn't feel twitchy. Think of it as a slightly sharper Porsche Cayman, perhaps?

The GTS is such a handsome car, so right in so many other areas that it's almost a relief to find that it's good to drive, too. With three years of production orders, the future looks good for Farbio, Britain's newest sports car maker. It's been a long road indeed.

British specialty sports car manufacturer Farbio has released details of their new 2009 Farbio Track Day Car. Weighing just 956kg (2108 lbs), the track car has a power to weight ratio of 366 brake horsepower per ton.

That is a whopping 56% more than the BMW Z4 M Roadster.

The announcement of this car comes at the same time as the Tokyo launch of the Farbio GTS. Introduced at the British Embassy building in Tokyo, the GTS was made official to the Japanese market on 7 January.

Limited to just 25 units, the Track Day Car is based on the supercharged Farbio GTS350. Upgrades include and intercooler and new injectors. The Track version has been stripped of many non-essential parts, but many of those are still available as options. There is really no need to purchase many of these options if you truly want a car built for the racetrack.

That being said, the car comes standard as a road legal unit. Some options will be needed to make it perfect for the track, including a roll cage. You can also have the company tune the engine from an already impressive 350 bhp to a numbing 450 bhp, making this a real racer.

A fuel bag tank represents the standard petrol tank, helping to avoid leaks and locking in any fuel vapors. The new gearbox also gets paired with limited slip differential. A dry sump does its best to prevent engine oil from collecting at the bottom. The car has the same carbon fibre body found on the GTS350.

The Farbio Track Day Car is available now directly from the company.