McLaren races to the top spot with production of 10,000th car

Since commencing production of its first 12C car in 2011, the success of McLaren Automotive is demonstrated by the fact that it passed the milestone of its first 5,000 cars in 42 months, but has made its 10,000th vehicle 22 months later. From the outset, Ricardo has been McLaren Automotive’s engine partner, firstly designing and developing the McLaren M838T 90 degree V8 twin-turbo engine in partnership with McLaren, and subsequently fulfilling all engine manufacturing requirements for the luxury performance automaker’s entire product range.

At the heart of Ricardo’s support for McLaren is the Ricardo High Performance Assembly Facility at Shoreham-by-Sea – a quality-focused production facility. Incorporating the latest thinking in high quality manufacture and operating within a strict ‘no faults forward’ culture, this facility has expanded its capacity and production rate in tandem with McLaren Automotive’s own Production Centre. A major expansion of Ricardo’s engine production facility, formally opened at the start of 2016, includes a range of laboratories and workshops capable of supporting prototype engine builds and advanced metrology – and a second dynamometer, capable of simulating real-world load conditions and of testing engines across the full range of power outputs.

“On behalf of the entire team at Ricardo I would like to congratulate McLaren on passing the milestone of its 10,000th car,” commented Mark Barge, Managing Director, Ricardo Performance Products. “We are proud to be McLaren Automotive’s engine partner, and of being trusted to manufacture the high quality, exceptional performance engines that we designed and developed together. Ricardo has invested in parallel with McLaren in our engine assembly plant – a world class facility that successfully combines state-of-the-art quality systems in a highly advanced and flexible manufacturing environment. We look forward to continuing to work with McLaren Automotive in what has been very much a success story for the UK automotive industry.”