McLaren Automotive announces plans to build new production center in UK

Ever since news of McLaren Automotive's birth broke, fans have been eagerly snatching up any news of the car that will succeed the venerable F1 supercar. Today McLaren revealed its plans to build a new UK production center where it will build the car along with two new high-end sports cars.

Ron Dennis announced the new McLaren Production Center (MPC) will be built in Woking, England, alongside the existing McLaren Technology Center. The new facility will enclose about 17,760 square meters (191,150 square feet) and employ about 800 people. Construction of the facility will begin soon, with production to begin in 2011, provided the application for the factory is approved by the planning commission.

"Ever since we revealed the McLaren F1 sports car in 1992, it has been a long-held dream of mine to launch a McLaren sports car company," said Ron Dennis. "Designing, developing and selling globally the best sports cars in the world is just half of that equation; building them to previously un-matched levels of quality, with ground-breaking technologies in a production facility in the UK is key to satisfying that dream. I believe that if the McLaren Production Centre is given the go ahead, it will be an engineering center of excellence of which McLaren and the UK can be proud."

Annual production will start at around 1,000 cars, rising to 4,000 cars once all three models have joined the lineup.

McLaren Automotive has already begun its global expansion, setting up an office in the Middle East and revealing many details about its upcoming cars, including the P11, P8 and still-unnamed F1-successor.

"It would be easy enough to consider building McLaren sports cars in existing productive and experienced foreign factories; a number of which are knocking on our door," said Dennis. "However, McLaren is a great British company founded over 40 years ago that should, in my view, continue to design and build our own products."