Noble M500 Full Test: Manual, V6 Supercar Is A Driving Great For £180k

Back to basics supercar is back, and basic: a beefy turbo engine meets a manual gearbox When defining the long-awaited Noble M500, it’s possibly more impactful to list what it lacks rather than what it has.Features notably absent from this lightweight coupé include any form of electronic stability control or torque vectoring, airbags, a driven front axle, an automatic gearbox, anti-lock braking and, finally, need we even say it, driver assistance systems. You won’t even hear a chime to tell you to put your seatbelt on – perhaps because Noble Automotive believes that anybody who can be trusted with fully 413bhp per tonne paired with a wheelbase only a tad longer than that of a Volkswagen Polo has a degree of situational awareness.We will get to the full technical rundown in a moment, but conceptually this successor to the lauded M600 of 2009 is an old-school driver’s car – one that asks more than average from its owner, in order to reward them more richly for getting things right. It’s the only flavour of car Noble Automotive, still based at a small unit in Leicestershire and concerned with truly tiny production volumes, has ever shown any desire to make, all the way back to the M10 of 1999.The carbonfibre-bodied M600, with its McLaren F1-rivalling speed, £200k asking price (£320k if you adjust for inflation) and cult status, casts a long shadow. But at £180k before options and with two fewer cylinders, as well as a glassfibre body, the new M500 is positioned differently. Boss Peter Boutwood says that rather than outright performance clout and expensive materials, its appeal lies in rarity, personalisation and a dynamic purity few if any mass-market rivals can even come close to matching.What we will now discover is the extent of that appeal and whether the latest Noble can stand up to less expensive – but perhaps less captivating – alternatives from the household-name manufacturers.