McLaren’s Production Centre in Woking (pictured) will get its chassis delivered from McLaren’s new chassis plant in Sheffield by 2020
McLaren is bringing carbon fibre chassis production back to Blighty with a new chassis production centre based in Sheffield and online by 2020.
But when McLaren used the new and novel material for the chassis of the fabled McLaren F1 more than 20 years ago it was a real big step. And an expensive and complicated one too.
In the time since, carbon fibre has become much more commonplace in car production, and McLaren’s entire current range uses carbon fibre for its chassis. But McLaren don’t make them, instead farming out production to an Austrian specialist, Carbo Tech.
But that’s going to change in the next few years as McLaren build a £50m specialist carbon fibre chassis centre in Sheffield, at the same time grabbing the use of Sheffield University’s advanced materials research centre.
Expected to create 200 jobs by the time it opens in 2020 – and save as much as £10m a year over the outsourced alternative – McLaren will joining the like of Boeing and Rolls Royce in working alongside Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), established 15 years ago as a collaboration between the University of Sheffield and Boeing.
As well as saving McLaren money on every car built, the new chassis centre will neatly sidestep potential cost issues which may arise after Brexit in 2019 (although we’d guess this was in the planning long before Brexit became big news), increase the British content by a chunk and, as well as bringing jobs to the Sheffield economy, potentially encourage suppliers to move to the area too.
Looks like a win-win for all. Well, apart from McLaren’s current Austrian chassis builder, Carbo Tech, that is.
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