SECTOR FOCUS

• Currently eight out of the 12 Formula 1 teams are based in the UK

• More than 15 UK universities offer motorsport engineering and management degrees

to roll out an initiative similar to the £1bn injection into the UK aerospace sector announced earlier this year. Keith Lewis, head of communications at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which has been liaising with the Government, says a Centre for Advanced Propulsion focusing on engine technology could be revealed this summer. “That concept has been studied by Vince Cable and Richard Parry-Jones (who chaired the Automotive Council UK and is a director of GKN) and those involved in the Automotive Sector Strategy and an initiative supporting the supply chain centring on excellence and innovation could be unveiled as early as June,” he states.

McLaren, one of the biggest names in F1, has also created the £840,000 P1 model which has a limited production of just 375 cars. A bigger rollout will come in production of its MP4-12C sports model with production of 1,500 cars a year. Mike Flewitt, COO of McLaren Automotive, says the model which retails for around £175,000-180,000 is selling well in the UK, Germany, North America and Asia. “As we build a presence in Asia, we will look at other markets such as India, Russia and South America,” he says. We’ll also have a new product at a slightly lower price point for the market by 2015,” says Flewitt. Building the sports cars should see the workforce rise by an extra 500 staff to 1,500 by 2016, bringing the total number at McLaren Group to around 4,000.

Caterham, another engineer with an F1 pedigree, is developing a sports car in a joint venture with French auto giant Renault. The group currently employs several hundred staff at its F1 base in Leafield, Oxfordshire and has a plant in Dartford, Kent producing 500 of the Caterham 7 model every year. The new £50,000 vehicle will be developed at Caterham Technology & Innovation (CTI), which already employs 160 staff in Hingham, Norfolk, and then built in France). The plan is to build 3,000 units of the model, rising to 6,000 in the second year, of which half will be exported – concentrating on Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. The story doesn’t end there, says Macdonald. CTI is also busy commercialising its many services, facilities and expertise for other, non- Caterham projects.

The UK’s car-making industry, which sells 80 per cent of its products overseas, will be closely following these developments. “We need to continue selling the UK to the biggest global automotive operators as the place to keep building cars,” says SMMT’s Keith Lewis.

For PwC’s Phil Harrold the signs are very positive. “The BRICs are important, but manufacturers such as JLR are also dependent on American demand,” he says. “Fortunately, the North American market is taking off. US car sales in the last quarter of last year were up 7 per cent.” To pass the 2m annual car production mark, extra investment of £1-3bn would be required. But the benefits of further cash injections are huge. The current figure of 140,000 workers directly employed by the industry in the UK would rise by another 20,000 and there would be a wider impact on the economy as a whole. Right now, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about where the British car-making industry is heading. n

To pass the 2m annual car production mark, extra investment of £1-3bn would be required

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