In North America, Noble is not a well-known car company. Most of what we know about Noble comes from an old episode of Top Gear where Richard Hammond drove one. Noble is a small English boutique supercar business that makes traditional cars that are designed with the driver in mind. Its bigger competitors, on the other hand, keep making cars that are more and more advanced. The Noble M500, the company’s newest concept car, is currently in pre-production. It’s one of the coolest supercar ideas we’ve seen in a long time, and we really hope it gets made. The supercar has a brand-new mid-engine and an F-150 Raptor engine. It has a manual gearbox. Noble is one of many companies to use a semi-pedestrian system. Its old M600, which Hammond famously drove for Top Gear, had a Volvo XC90 V8 engine made by Yamaha. Noble then turned to Ford and stole the M500’s 3.5-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine from the F-150 Raptor. The best thing about it is that it has yet to be heavily changed to be used as a supercar. UK magazines like Evo Magazine have reviewed prototypes of the Raptor and say that Noble did not make any changes to the car’s internals. Even though it now has 506 horsepower, the Raptor still has 56 horsepower less than the regular model. However, it only needs a little power since the original was only about 3,200 pounds. The company Noble says that when it is made, it will weigh about 2,650 pounds. Some of the same reviews, like this one from Autocar, say that the engine’s personality is great because it makes a lot of noises, like turbocharged beeps and whooshes from the wastegate. Noble uses an engine from a Raptor, which is much more popular than the engine in the Ford GT. In addition, Ford won’t let you connect it to a manual gear. Noble will, and to make things even better, it will come with a six-speed open-gate manual gearbox. Even though the Noble M500 is just a concept and has been in public development since 2022, the world needs it more than anything else right now. The M500 is very different from today’s supercars in many ways. It has a traditional handbrake, a turn-key instead of a key fob, and a steering wheel with no controls. Its transmission and engine are also delightfully simple and retro. Like with small companies, the Noble M500’s output is never a sure thing. It’s not likely that it will be sold in North America, even if it does. However, the fact that this car exists will be good for the auto industry. It would be great to see a few M500s driving around on UK roads soon.
