Like on Facebook
The McLaren Production Center is located in Woking, Surrey, UK; it was built by Foster + Partners. The 34,500 square meter facility is where all of the McLaren cars are built. The most recently released high-performance car, the MP4-12C is also being assembled here.
The facility is set up for a flexible production. The arrangement of the two-story structure mirrors the flow of the production line: components are delivered; the cars are assembled, painted and tested, and then pass through a rolling road and car wash before leaving the building.
Beneath this floor is a full basement level for storage and plant, and above is a mezzanine floor with views over the production line. Every stage of production takes place under the same roof. Initially it takes 10 days for an MP4-12C to be assembled. During peak production it will be possible to build one of the cars in five days. A new car will join the line every 45 minutes. I had no idea that so many of these cars were sold!
Wow, that facility is unbelievable! They must have an army of cleaning staff.
These cars are toys for the 1% so they can show off their obscene wealth. Good design should be for everybody.
(Stevie) Exactly what I was going to say.. Can’t believe while there are ppl getting slammed by our nation/gov, there are still ppl who can afford these cars.. and the production daily is off the charts!
@Paul @Stevie I’m going to have to disagree. One of the biggest misconceptions about success is that the people who have more money then you, didn’t earn it. I would have to say that a good number probably have earned it. Just because people can afford these expensive cars doesn’t make them the evil 1%. It’s definitely something to think about and to put forefront when conversing or dealing with the problems of today.
Sweet baby jesus if you’re driving one of those things then you sure as hell earned it, unless someone gave you one which would officially make you the luckiest person alive.
I can’t believe how white & clean everything is! Not your every day assembly line, but then again they prob use a lot of white to show how clean & precise their work is like a painter does.
@Anthony Right? That facility is extremely clean!
cool. re: rich people and their rich cars…
1 way to look at it…if they earned it, yes, they ‘deserve’ these type of things.
another look is that this type of wealth, whether you earned it or not, is not just obscene, it’s morally repugnant. this is not an argument against the person per se, but the whole system that allows this type of economic model, which abuses the earth, it’s resources, and covertly pays off militants to kill indigenous peoples that live in regions where such resources are extracted. etc. etc. etc.
it’s fine though. you only live once, might as well live it up. ignorance IS bliss.
Lord, you people are nuts. You aren’t harmed by someone driving a McLaren. Quit complaining. Good design is good design.
not to throw thus even more ‘off track’, but someone brought it up Tom, and the point isnt just about a damn car. when you talk about extreme wealth and ‘dealing with problems of today’ then it seems clear that the economic model, ‘system’, or whatever u want to call it, be seriously addressed at some point in conjunction with the very real problems that are a direct result of such a system.
wealth, I’m sure it’s insanely awesome. BUT…critically there are things to be said beyond ‘wealthy people suck/no they don’t, I want to be like them’ (I’m not mocking any 1 person here, this more the general depth in the west).
@Tom, I feel Tom’s frustration. @Mike All of this relates closely to individual success and attitude towards it.
The government has problems, big problems. However, regardless of any system that is believed to be the solution of economic inequality, the chance of pure economic equality is slim. It just really isn’t possible unless you start to create a nation of complacent people.
For the time that humans have inhabited Earth (3.2 million years to the last human ancestor) it has always been about who can conquer more or who has more (power, land, money, etc). There is something intriguing about that which leads me to believe that “competition” is part of the DNA strand.
I think there ultimately is something more important here though: those who have objectively found success, should be congratulated.
The Mclaren company designed a fast car at an price targeted at those who can afford it. It’s not meant for everyone. Does this sound familiar? It should because it’s what Apple does. You have to aspire to things. If we had nothing to aspire to, the world would be boring. Just as cavemen aspired to their next kill or grinding stone, we aspire to better our design or build a better product.
Just like Apple or Nike or Adobe, they’ve found their markets and are selling their product. It’s all relative; “need” is subjective. We could be using Microsoft Paint instead of Photoshop because the price…
Competition is more than in just our DNA – try and name an animal or plant that doesn’t try and increase it’s territory, it’s breeding circle or reduce it’s competition, etc. Competition, and subsequent success, is how just about every living thing survives – it’s called ‘survival of the fittest’.
There is zero point (nor would their be any success) in trying to get people to be non-competitive – as Shelby mentions, you’ll end up with a society of completely complacent people.
Bill Gates, for example, is obscenely wealthy but he’s also given approx. $29billion to charity since 2000. Does that make him evil or not?
Anyway, without the rich to buy them, what sort of cars would the designers and engineers at MacLaren be building – probably nothing worth posting on a design blog.
Well the future of what little British Manufacturing has to be in top class products as unskilled labour will always end up in Eastern Europe or Asia so on the one hand I applaud the factory etc, though on the other I think such cars are pretty pointless and in this age of design efficiency that engines bigger than a certain size should be banned. Automotive design is advanced enough to get serious performance out of smaller engines. The all time classic engines like the Cosworth (perhaps the most successful ever in racing) or the Ferrari Columbo V12 of the iconic 250/275 series cars were both under 3 litres. No real need for monsterously large engines these days.
As much as I disapprove of the excessive prices and consumption there will always be people who can afford those and the rest of us use public transport. Taxation and Laws should encourage more efficient design and consumption rather than short termism.