Margay Products Inc.

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Margay is a kart chassis manufacturer that designs and builds sprint and endurance karts in St. Louis MO, USA.

Margay has been around karting almost since karting began. The company started out in 1964 making gearboxes for karts then tried building chassis. It proved to be an instant success. Margay has built more than 20,000 chassis and has won more races in the World Karting Association (WKA) than any other manufacturer. Current Margay team drivers who have enjoyed success including WKA triple crowns, manufacturer cups, and championships include Corey Reeves, Eric Morrow, and Caleb Loniewski. Margay is also a large distributor of Bridgestone tires.

An article from Margay's website on their history notes:

‘New Breed’ was the name given to Margay’s first chassis as it was ushering in a ‘new breed’ of kart. The ‘Sidewinder’ featured the first side-mounted engine. ‘AM Pac’ stood for American PACkage which was a turn-key kart consisting of a Panther X chassis with our own LMR engine. The ‘Bandito’ name was derived from a drawing by Don Freber of a pistol-pointing, sombrero-wearing Margay behind the wheel of a kart as it hurls down the track (still the coolest sticker we have ever produced). ‘SR-16’ stood for sprint racer 16 as it was the 16th different sprint chassis we built (apparently we spent more time developing the kart than we did the name). The ‘Expert’ name was applied to karts in an era where the IKF ‘Expert’ classes were dominated by karting’s heavy hitters. ‘ELS’ was a designation for Entry Level Sprint. ‘A/C’ designates the adjustable caster feature while ‘F/C’ designates Fixed Caster. ‘TNR’ designated Tom Nields Racing with whom we worked to develop that series of chassis. ‘TK’ stood for Tom (Nields) and Keith (Freber) while the ‘4’ in ‘400’ designated a four-rail chassis design. ‘SE’ designates sprint enduro. A ‘Tsunami’ is a killer tidal wave caused by an earthquake. That name was applied to another package kart which featured Yamaha engines. ‘Syncro’ had no real meaning or story behind it, it just sounded cool. Finally, ‘Brava’ was the conclusion of a late-night brainstorming session on the eve of the CIK homologation form submission.

[edit] External links

Margay Official website