Off to bed here in London soon. Tomorrow I get to tour the Mclaren factory. Will post a lot of pics.
tomorrow.I promise. Its been 4 time zones in the last 9 days. Finally headed home.....pics coming tomorrow.
Ok Im a week late but here is my story for the Mclaren Factory tour. Short version- It was epic! If you have the opportunity, make sure you go as you will get a very new appreciation for the brand. If you want the long version, keep reading. Ill be doing this over several posts as I have a ton of photos I want to post. Long version- As a recent 720 owner, Ive fallen in love with the car. Ive owned other brands, there cars, other models. Nothing has quite hit the mark like the 720 has. I was close to purchasing a 650 back in 2015 but the deal fell through for various reasons but here I am as a 4 month 720 owner. I had a business trip scheduled for Germany this week and a month or so ago, I decided to extend the trip a bit and add a layover in London as I had some other work that I needed to get done there as well. And then the thought popped in my head- London? Isn't that close to Woking? Isn't Woking where the Mclaren factory is? So I contacted the good folks at my dealership and BAM!! Next thing you know they set up a private tour for me and several friends who happen to live in London as well. One a 720 owner and another a multiple Ferrari owner. The third has a bunch of cars but no Mclaren. My buddy picked me up this morning and we did the drive from Central London to Woking. Not very far but took over an hour due to traffic. We arrived a bit late but Stephen, our host and Brand Ambassador for Mclaren was graciously waiting for us. He could not have been nicer and turns out he is Bruce Mclaren's son in law! He is married to the late Bruce Mclarens daughter. The drive to the facility once you enter is out of this world. There is a massive lake and the campus sits adjacent to the lake. You see some of the facility but much of it is underground, built under the ground. Just gorgeous. There is a beautiful driveway to the guest parking area which holds about 20 or so cars. We were the only tour scheduled that morning. Some pics of the facility, lake, interior of the main hall. My buddy brought his Paris Blue 720 and we got a nice picture out front even though we weren't supposed to. Oops. View attachment 2639777 View attachment 2639778 View attachment 2639779 View attachment 2639780 View attachment 2639781
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When you enter, our host ushered us into a beautiful waiting area while we waited for the two members of our party to arrive. Inside was a bunch of color samples, leather samples and a turntable with the car du jour on it. Today it happened to be a beautiful Saros 720 Spider. It was gorgeous. There were also a couple of Amalgam collection model cars. These are 1:8 in scale and LARGE! I believe to get one of these ordered is close to 5k. The quality was epic and if I ever get a ultimate series car, you better believe Im getting one of these. There was also a Mille Mclaren watch on display. I dont know much about Milles but my understanding is that they are more expensive than the cars themselves. View attachment 2639797 View attachment 2639798 View attachment 2639799 View attachment 2639800 View attachment 2639801 View attachment 2639802 View attachment 2639803
When you walk into the facility, other than the reception room on the left, the main floor is one massive room as you can see from the pics above. There are various race cars mostly on display. The very first car you see is Bruce Mclaren's first car that he and his father built when he was like 13 or 14. Then is the fastest P1 ever recorded. The value of this particular car was stated to be between 30-40 million pounds. View attachment 2639804 View attachment 2639805 View attachment 2639806 View attachment 2639807 View attachment 2639808 View attachment 2639809 View attachment 2639810 View attachment 2639811 View attachment 2639812 View attachment 2639813
View attachment 2639814 View attachment 2639815 View attachment 2639816 View attachment 2639817 View attachment 2639818 View attachment 2639819 View attachment 2639820 Then rest of the main hall is all the race cars in history. They have them all laid out from oldest to newest with one exception, last years F1 car is first. Its quite amazing to see the history of the cars how they developed and the carbon chasis. You can also see how the air intakes for the 720s in the front evolved- in the F1 cars, they had air scoops that would direct air to the brakes to keep them cool.
More F1 cars. View attachment 2639824 View attachment 2639825 View attachment 2639826 View attachment 2639827 View attachment 2639828 View attachment 2639829 View attachment 2639830 View attachment 2639831 View attachment 2639832 View attachment 2639833
You can see the p1 GTR cars as well. View attachment 2639834 View attachment 2639835 View attachment 2639836 View attachment 2639837 View attachment 2639838 View attachment 2639839 View attachment 2639840 View attachment 2639841 View attachment 2639842 View attachment 2639843
More F1 and GTR cars: View attachment 2639844 View attachment 2639845 View attachment 2639846 View attachment 2639847 View attachment 2639848
The very first P1 ever built- on loan from the owner who has like 40 cars and parks his P1 at the factory: View attachment 2639849 View attachment 2639850 View attachment 2639851 View attachment 2639852 View attachment 2639853 View attachment 2639854 View attachment 2639855 View attachment 2639856 View attachment 2639849 View attachment 2639850 View attachment 2639851 View attachment 2639852 View attachment 2639853 View attachment 2639854 View attachment 2639855 View attachment 2639856 View attachment 2639857
They had a full scale Lego 720 replica - The car weighed over 3000 pounds and everything was built from legos except the wheels were real: View attachment 2639858 View attachment 2639859 View attachment 2639860 View attachment 2639861 View attachment 2639862 View attachment 2639863 View attachment 2639864 View attachment 2639865
More racing history - you can see the air scoops to cool the brakes View attachment 2639866 View attachment 2639867 View attachment 2639868 View attachment 2639869 View attachment 2639870 View attachment 2639871 View attachment 2639872
The original long tail, a soap box derby car that can go like 80mph by gravity alone, a carbon fiber tub of the 570 - super light weight and finally we had lunch with one of the main designers who was super excited about the projects he was working on but could not discuss the project openly. All in all an amazing trip and thanks to Mclaren Scottsdale for helping to set up the trip. View attachment 2639873 View attachment 2639874 View attachment 2639875 View attachment 2639876
Finally a bit about the production floor - we were not allowed to take any pictures. Production room was one large room. Massive. 2 lines. One for Sennas. Saw about a half dozen or so Sennas being produced. The other line for 570, 600, 720 and 720 spider. Basically everything else. We weren't allowed to walk the floor but from what I saw, maybe 6 or so completed 720 spiders and 3 or so completed coupes. There were many more under production- maybe 60+ cars, this is just what I saw. The rest were in various stages of production. Each car is hand built. Goes from station to station and spends about 30 minutes. at each station as they put in the various components, engine, seats, etc etc. Saw some bad ass 600 LTs as well. About 100 (maybe more) employees working there. But the place was spotless. I mean you could eat off the floor. The cars as they are manufactured had blue wheels on them. This is what they test the cars with and then put the final wheels after testing. Each car goes through a testing room on rollers where they take it up to about 100 mph, then a monsoon room where they test for leaks. a very small percentage of cars have leaks (less than 2%), mostly spiders and they fix them immediately. Once the testing is done, a protective film gets put on and each car is driven on the road to ensure all is good. Then the final wheels are put on and the car goes out for shipping. Since each car is custom built- there are no robots, no machinery, no power tools. Its quite the operation as you can imagine.
Stephen? You mean Amanda McLaren’s husband? A really nice guy with an incredible knowledge of McLaren.
The soap box was the MP4-T5 as that’s what the designers expected to get (UK readers might get that but I doubt if others will) Walking the floor of MPC is not something many people get to do, it really is something else, loved doing it. The MTC tour for owners is a great experience, having Stephen take you round must have been great. Glad you enjoyed it.
