[1] Melling's factory and company were based in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, however the launch of the Wildcat coincided with one of the worst recessions the automotive business has had.
At this point, in an attempt to turn the business around, Melling and his wife decided to move everything to the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve) in Portugal,[2] where a deal was completed on factory space.
[3] This project started when Melling was approached by an American, John Silseth II, who ran an investment brokerage business and was enthusiastic about motorbikes.
Silseth suggested to him that he could get some manufacturers and a designer to make a world superbike using the March name: he then obtained the rights to it and decided it was perfect for the American market.
This was not attended by the certain two investors pulling out – and Melling was awarded all the rights of the project and possession of the tooling of the new Manx, Nirvana, Buffalo and Nemesis bikes.
They came to an agreement, along with John Richards, that they would organise a consortium to finance a buyout bid of Rolls-Royce – this being offered for sale by the Vickers Group.
[citation needed] After Melling's bid to secure Rolls-Royce lost out to a German buyer, he was asked by other members of his consortium to build a new luxury car that would be quintessentially British, and fill the void left by sale of Rolls-Royce/Bentley.
The project fell apart after some time, leaving Melling with a V12 engine which was completed and running, but could not be put to commercial use: he suffered hefty financial losses.
[12] His team played a part in TWR's V12 engine which helped Jaguar win Le Mans four years on the run, and he has always wanted his own car in the world's most exciting road race.
The F1 engine, which features four valves and three tiny MCD designed spark plugs per cylinder, fell behind in its schedule leading to the Mastercard Lola formula one team not qualifying for the 1997 season.
Another design, purely on paper, was to have been a wide 165-degree angle V12 to be built with General Motors support but GM withdrew and the project died.
The V10 design that was ultimately intended for the MasterCard Lola GP never appeared in 1997 leaving the team to run with customer Ford EC V8 engines.
Taking influence from TVRs, the car is front-engined with rear-wheel-drive using a fibreglass monocoque body and box section steel chassis, independent wishbone suspension and a six speed trans-axle, from the Chevrolet Corvette.
The Titan, a copy of a bike that Melling had initially made for himself, where he sculpted the cylinders of the engine to look like the American fighter planes of the Second World War.