So McLaren want to build its road cars in a new factory next door to its mightily impressive race team headquarters in Woking, Surrey.
Should we be surprised? Maybe not. After all, it’s perfectly logical that it should house its road and race car divisions next door to each other, benefitting from the proximity of resources and staff.
Then again, there’s plenty of reasons why McLaren might have chosen to build its road cars a long way from Woking – and even outside Britain. For starters, the vast majority of road car building expertise – and especially supercar expertise – lives across the Channel. And a race team with McLaren’s pedigree knows that to build the best cars, it pays to build them surrounded by the experts.
Read about McLaren's plans for a British HQ hereWhat’s more, there’s no doubt that there are many suitors that would have coveted having a company of McLaren’s reputation set up an engineering base in their country, and probably would have invested hefty sums in the business to make it happen.
But that was never going to happen, and the reason for that is, I suspect, above all else, company boss Ron Dennis.
Say what you will about the man – and in my experience he’s far more soulful and inspiring in person than he’s ever appeared on television or in print - but there is absolutely no disputing both his pride in being British, and his unwavering commitment to promoting Britain and British talent.
Planning permission permitting (and there’s no doubt that today’s story about the new base is aimed squarely at persuading planners of the benefits of the project), the decision to build his road cars in Britain is another demonstration of that.
Company founder Bruce McLaren may have been a Kiwi, but Ron Dennis continues to define today’s McLaren, and it’s as British as beef. It’s something we should all be grateful for.
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