In the early 1960’s, homebuilt and small-batch sports racers ruled the day in road racing. This was the early days of broader space-frame building and most of the purpose-built race cars of the day were simply skeletal steel frames with featherweight one-piece bodies draped over them. The end result was that cars were fantastically light, if a bit on the dangerous side, and that a relatively small, though relatively high-output, engine could still get the job done on a road course. This immaculate Merlyn MK6A available on eBay is a fine example of the type and with the yellow-over-black design, it looks tremendous.

From the pictures, you can tell there just isn’t much to the car at all. The fuel cell sits next to the driver, which is suboptimal, but it literally won’t fit anywhere else because there’s no space for it anywhere else. Most of the car sits at or below knee level, with only the rear deck over the Lotus-Ford 1.6-liter engine and the later-added roll bar more than 18 inches off the ground. The nose sits almost impossibly low with the front fenders sculpted to fit the wheels almost perfectly and with the rear sloping down as well, it’s a beautifully streamlined piece of vintage racing potential.

The Lotus-Ford is both a twin-cam and a hemispherically chambered engine, fairly rare things both in the early 1960’s outside of road racing. These compact little mills made about 100 horsepower without touching any of the internals but could be coaxed to make significantly more. Couple with the super-light chassis—the seller says the car weighs under 1,000 pounds dry—this little racer would be incredibly quick. The Merlyn also featured independent four-wheel suspension with coilovers and disc brakes all around, which were again advanced for the time.

The car currently sits in the shop of famous Dick Barbour, whose Porsche won the GT class championship of the American Le Mans Series in 2000. Find this Merlyn on eBay right here.