MADE EP.6 | Ian Ray on JLR, McLaren and Forseven

Kiron: Hi, guys. Welcome to another episode of Made, the podcast that talks to those who have made it in the industries that make things. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice we have stayed at ENGEL, and we've moved our filming location, so we've got some beautiful ENGEL machines around us, and hopefully, we will continue to be filming content here. In today's episode, I'm joined by Ian Ray, currently at McLaren Automotive, who's a non-metallic specialist, and we're gonna hear all about his journey in automotive, and hear where he started, where he is now, and maybe what the future of automotive might look like. So thank you, Ian, for joining us.

Ian: Thank you for having me.

Kiron: You're very welcome.so obviously talking off air, sounds like you're a, a local lad, born and bred kind of in and around Warwickshire. Always like to start the episodes of where you started from and how you kind of got to where you are now. So yeah, how did you end up in the area to begin with?

Ian: Yeah. Well, how long have we got? 'Cause it's quite a story. So I was, as you quite rightly say, a Warwickshire lad. I was born and brought up very local to here, a little village called Long Itchington. When I was 12, my parents moved us two miles up the road to a small town called Southam, which is approximately six miles from where we are now. And my parents still live there, bless them. Growing up I enjoyed school but I knew that I wanted to leave school as soon as I could and get out into the world. And I actually originally was thinking about a career in aerospace. I have a passion for aerospace…

Kiron: Where did that come from?

Ian: Well, it's a family thing, to be perfectly honest. So my granddad and my dad and his two brothers, my uncles, they all worked at Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Company in Coventry while it was there. So they used to cycle from the village that was close to Southam, a village called Stockton. They used to cycle every day up to what is Coventry Airport now and work there, and then at the end of the day, obviously cycle back. Then my dad, at the age of seventeen, eighteen, decided he wanted to go into the RAF, and he joined the RAF. And really, it's a thing in the family that aerospace and flight has intrigued us all, and captured our hearts. So growing up, I'd visit air shows and museums and I'd know everything about the aircraft that was in the sky. Big love for fast jets rather than the commercial airliners. And, so I saw it as either I'd perhaps go in the RAF, but actually fancy doing engineering, than follow in my dad's footsteps. Unfortunately, aerospace had gone through a decline as much as automotive went through a change and decline in the '70s and this was the '80s. So, when I was fifteen and applying for apprenticeships, in 1989, I wrote to the various British Aerospace sites to say, "I'd like to do an engineering apprenticeship, please." And they all one by one would write back and say, "At sixteen we don't take  apprentices from outside a certain distance from our site." Which is understandable, you know, homesick and that sort of thing, and you're still quite young, still quite a child really at sixteen. Certainly in those days anyway. And so I was getting a bit sort of, oh I'm probably have to stay on and maybe do A levels. I got a letter from the training manager at British Aerospace Hatfield, which no longer exists that site anymore. But I started to read it, and it was the standard, "Sorry, you don't live close enough. I might consider you at 18." But the last paragraph said, "But I've noticed where you live, you're very close to the automotive region, and we own, Rover Group Limited."

Kiron: Right.

Ian: So British Aerospace owned them at, at the time. "And, have you thought about applying for an apprenticeship with one of the automotive companies, especially Rover Group?" So I thought, "Well, okay," I said to my dad, "I suppose that's an option if I want to pursue an apprenticeship." And it's the way that life turns out. It's very funny. But the very next day, at registration, my form tutor, that I have a lot of admiration for, said, "Oh, anybody interested in engineering apprenticeships, at 10:00 o'clock we've got a visit from the newly appointed training manager for Rover Group Gaydon."

Kiron: Right.

Ian: And Gaydon being an RAF, an old RAF airfield that was now a test and development center that was literally another six miles in a different direction from where I lived. I went along, was wowed by what he had to say, applied, and on the 1st of August 1990, I started as an engineering apprentice for Rover Group Limited.

Kiron: And that was it. That was you in automotive .

Ian: That was it, yeah, into automotive.

Kiron: So your form tutor that you mentioned, what was his name?

Ian: Andy Wroughton.

Kiron: And you said you got a lot of admiration for him.

Ian: Yeah, he understood me, looked after me. I could talk to him and ask for advice, and he would give his opinions and good advice.

Kiron: It's something that, you know, we were chatting off-air about, relationships and people that you can still work with all the way through. And it's interesting that from the age of, what, about 15, 16, that kind of started your journey, and it's something that I know you've still kept close to your heart, that whole ethos of building relationships.

Ian: Yeah.

Kiron: So you started your apprenticeship, and then how long was that apprenticeship for?

Ian: So that was a four-year technical apprenticeship.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: I still remember the first day at Gaydon. For those of you who know anything about Gaydon now, there's about 14,000 people on site. And it's a major facility. When I started 1st of Aug- 1st of August 1990, we were in the boardroom that, I mean, no longer exists, that building now. The plant manager, director, John Wolfe, welcomed us to the site and said that the 22 apprentices in the room took the number of people on site to just over 500. So very different at the time. And not so many buildings, still a lot of test facilities. And what would happen is the other Rover Group facilities engineers would visit the site to support testing, and there was a core on site. And I had always had a love for materials, and this dated back really again to aerospace, where I'd be reading up about the introduction of the Harrier GR5 into the RAF, and it talked about state-of-the-art new composite materials. And I was like, "Oh, what's that then?" So I did some investigation into what composite materials were and I would read about light alloys and single crystal fan blades for engines. So I was very much inquisitive about materials. This came up in my interview, and the day I started as an apprentice, they said, "Right, well, you're gonna be allocated to the materials engineering department. So you're gonna be starting your four-year apprenticeship, and you're gonna do day release at Coventry Technical College. And you're gonna do an ordinary national certificate in materials technology for two years. And then when you've completed that, you'll do a higher national certificate in materials engineering." And then if you want to, once you finish your apprenticeship, you can go on and do day release and do a material science degree at, at the time it was Lanchester Polytechnic, which is now Coventry University. So very much that was a plan that excited me, was exactly what I wanted to do. I had ambitions to... I wanted to do a degree, but I didn't necessarily want to follow the route that was becoming the norm of you went and did A levels, and you went to university.

Kiron: It's currently super topical at the moment. Obviously, the Prime Minister has been, has been speaking quite heavily about this, and especially with technology developments and AI and all the rest of it.

Ian: Absolutely. 

Kiron: I think it's almost gonna come full circle where these trades and, like you said, people learning certain skillsets and technical ability is gonna become more important than ever, as things continue to grow.

Kiron: So at what age were you then when you finished this apprenticeship and-

Ian: So when I finished the apprenticeship, I was 20.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: And then I had a year before I started the degree, just from my own personal decision, and I started to do the degree at 21, again part-time. So I finished that when I was 25. Graduated in 2000.

Kiron: Right. Okay. And then after there, where was your first full-time post-education role?

Ian: Well, so when you finish your apprenticeship, you then are an engineer.

Kiron: Fine.

Ian: So your training is all about... You start in the laboratory in materials engineering, or you did in those days, and you went through each team within the laboratory. So, the non-met team, obviously. The process materials team, analytical team, chemistry, and the metallurgy team.

Kiron: Right.

Ian: There was also a joining and adhesives team. So you worked in all of those. And you started off doing testing, understanding the standards, testing materials and components to those standards. So you understand why those tests were required, what it was testing for, and why it was important for that material to meet that standard, perform, et cetera. So that gave you the grounding and the understanding. And you would understand why a certain plastic would perform one way, say in a UV, and another plastic would perform a different way in a UV test.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: And then as you progress through the apprenticeship, you then start to take on more responsibility, start to become more on the engineering side. So when you finish your apprenticeship, you then become a materials project engineer.

Kiron: Right. Okay.

Ian: And then it's down to yourself, your own personal development drive, for you to push your  career and work with the department. And you take on more and more and become more of an engineer then, and the laboratory side starts to fall by the wayside. Not fall by the wayside, but, you know, you move on from that and do more from the engineering side.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah. For sure. So then, at what point, just to educate me, from what point do you go from Rover then to JLR, when does that happen?

Ian: Yeah, so that was, again, automotive is very cyclical, very up and down. So when I joined, as I said, British Aerospace owned Rover Group, and we had a partnership with Honda. So not many people know that the Hondas in the UK during the early '90s, a majority were built by Rover in their factories.

Kiron: Oh, right.

Ian: And we had a partnership where we used a number of Honda platforms for the Rover 200, 400, and Rover 600. Worked very closely with them. So we'd learnt a lot about quality, and the importance of quality, which obviously everyone knew quality was important, but it was more the application and the tool sets that the Japanese brought to the application of measuring and ensuring you had a quality product. So Honda very much brought that, and I learned a lot from that and, and as a company, Rover Group learnt a lot from that. British Aerospace, then sold the company to BMW. And the partnership with Honda ended. And BMW,  well you know, it was a bit of a love-hate relationship.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: But we again learnt a lot. Certainly the detail and the engineering, really understanding to the nth degree, was certainly what we learnt from the German engineers.

Kiron: Is that what, is that what you loved about it?

Ian: Yeah, absolutely. 

Kiron: What did you hate about it?

Ian: What I hated about it, there was a cultural difference at the time.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: It was sort of pre-globalisation.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: And there was definitely a cultural difference. That broke down. I spent some time regularly visiting BMW in Germany. Those relationships, I like to think I'm a people person and there's nothing better than meeting somebody and talking face-to-face rather than... I mean, in those days it was faxes, and an internal post system. We didn't have emails and smartphones in those days.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: We were only just introducing CAD at the time. We still had 2D drawings that were printed off and stored. So you'd go to the technical library and print off a huge 2D drawing on paper, if you needed to look at a component, et cetera. So, yeah, the industry modernised very quickly and has changed very considerably. I learned a lot in those days, the importance of, let's say, relationships, the importance of attention to detail, and how quality matters. And especially, the one thing that is a big bugbear of mine is,, "We've always done it this way." That's the worst thing you could say.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah. 

Ian: It might have been right at the time. You might have always done it this way, doesn't mean to say it's right now.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ian: So yeah, I learned a lot.

Kiron: Well, to be honest, that's kind of a good segue into a little segment I wanna do with you, 'cause you've mentioned Honda, BMW, Rover. We're gonna get onto JLR and McLaren. You talked about quality, and there are so many assets, factors that come into making the perfect automotive brand and company. So I wanna just do a little game with you. If you were the boss of a new automotive company, and you had full control and you could bring in the best assets from various OEMs that exist now, let's put it into four categories, and you can only pick one per category.

Ian: Yeah.

Kiron: Design. What OEM would you say, "I'd pick the best design element comes from..." Let's say Ferrari would be an example. So design for you, who do you think is doing the best job of design globally?

Ian: Globally?

Kiron: It can be historic. Yeah. It doesn't have to be current.

Ian: Yeah. So, there's some fantastic cars out there obviously. The one thing that separated ourselves at JLR from our competition was we were design-led.

Kiron: Okay. So would you say JLR would be your design-

Ian: Oh, absolutely.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: That's fine. I'm biased, but absolutely. 

Kiron: So let's go JLR for design.

Ian: Yeah.

Kiron: For quality?

Ian: Quality, the Japanese OEMs. Outstanding

Kiron: Any particular one?

Ian: I mean, I would say Honda, but any of the Japanese, Toyota, any of those.

Kiron: Do you wanna lock in Honda for that one?

Ian: Yeah, lock in Honda. Yeah.

Kiron: Honda. Service?

Ian: So service is an interesting one because the business model for service is that the franchises are, although they are, to the brand, they are independent.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: And the downfall of many automotive brands can be the quality of their dealerships. There are fantastic dealerships out there.

Kiron: Who do you think is doing a particularly good job?

Ian: I certainly think from my experience with the German OEMs,  there's some really good dealerships.

Kiron: If you had to lock in one German brand.

Ian: I haven't had that many vehicle brands that I've driven, so I'm gonna be slightly biased and say BMW.

Kiron: Fine. And then finally, soul. Something that I think of automotive brands, in my opinion, are struggling to keep hold of.

Ian: Yes.

Kiron: But it can, again, it can be historic. If you could steal the soul of an automotive OEM and put it into your brand-new company, who comes to mind?

Ian: Yeah. So you've obviously got the Ferraris and Lamborghinis. 

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: Amazing vehicles. Amazing brands.

Kiron: You wanna lock in one of them?

Ian: Porsche again.

Kiron: Okay. Yeah.

Ian: Porsche, very good. I have a sweet spot for James Bond films.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: And the Aston Martins that are in those films. 

Kiron: Good shout.

Ian: So, I would say Aston Martin.

Kiron: I mean, that's pretty good. If you design JLR, Honda quality, service of BMW with the soul of an Aston Martin, I think it'd do pretty well.

Ian: Yeah.

Kiron: Fine. Good, good choice.

Ian: So in 2000, the ownership of Rover Group by BMW came to an end sadly. And, at that time, it was quite traumatic for the automotive industry in the UK, and the company was broken up into several pieces. I was offered the opportunity to stay with BMW at their Oxford site and pursue a career through BMW. And I decided at the time that wasn't really what I wanted to do. And I joined a company that had been Lucas, another strong British brand at the time, and they'd just been purchased by TRW, a big American company. So I joined a tier one, which was TRW Automotive. And I started there as an engineer and they then went through some commercial turmoil. Again, as I said, it's automotive. And the center I was based at in Solihull, was really looking at R&D and future tech. So they started electric drive systems. They worked on autonomous cars- 

Kiron: You said this was 2000, did you say? Or-

Ian: So this is as early as 2000. So when I joined in 2001, there was a Jaguar that would go out on the road and drive itself.

Kiron: Blimey.

Ian: So lane departure warning, your adaptive cruise control, all of that was-

Kiron: So what's the reason you think it's taken 20-plus years to start seeing that?

Ian: Yeah. So with autonomous driving, there are a lot of legalities around that. So it's the famous question of if the autonomous car is driving up to a crossroads, and the baby in a pram being pushed by a mother is crossing the crossroads 'cause they haven't seen the car coming or haven't looked, does it swerve to divert that, hitting the mother and child, to then take out an older set of adults on the side of the road? What's the dilemma? These are real decisions that have had to be worked upon so that the safety systems in cars now enable that you'd... 'Cause your answer would be, well, we want the car to stop before it has to do any of that swerving. The other big issue is, of course, that the model for owning a car at the moment is that you are insured as the driver. With autonomous vehicles, the dilemma is: who then pays for the insurance? Because the car is driving. So does that mean the car manufacturers are then responsible for the insurance? And if that's the case, then the business model isn't viable because, obviously, the amount of commercial liability as a result of that. So it's taken a long time for autonomous vehicles to get to the stage where they are considered safe and usable, and there are trials on the road now, and have been for a couple of years, especially in San Francisco, with Waymo taxis. But, yeah, there are steps that the actual driver themselves needs to go through to become comfortable with it.

Kiron: Do you think that we will get to a point in the nearest future where it's full autonomous, you know, most of the time on the road, and they're fully electric vehicles? Do you think that's realistic or not?

Ian: So there are certainly the model for the future, in some of the super cities, or mega cities that are occurring around the world, is that Generation Z, is currently… They don't want to own things. They like, you know, they stream songs and movies. They're very much, short, short span, you know, bite size bits of information. And so in the mega cities, they'll potentially, they'll need to go to their place of work. But they'll take a robo taxi to their place of work because that's all they're doing is really moving, you know, moving around within a city, within the transport requirements of the city. However, at the weekend, they may want to leave the city and visit their friends, and that's the point where potentially they might want to do it in a different manner. So they might then go and hire a vehicle for the weekend. So the model for some vehicle manufacturers may be that the dealerships, you go in and you actually hire the car from the dealership. So you may be that you could, you might take your C segment car. But you might go, "Actually, I'm gonna visit my parents in the country. I'm gonna hire a Range Rover, and I'm gonna go in luxury and just use it for the weekend." So the model will very much change. But there'll still be a need for cars. And much the way that the motorcycle industry has gone, in that they have become very much a luxury item. People still have motorcycles. But they, you know, you think of the brands and the cost of motorcycles. Cars maybe will go the same way in that you use it as your luxury item.

Kiron: Yeah. Well, it's like horses, isn't it?

Ian: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Kiron: It used to be a mode of transport, and now it's a luxury item.

Ian: Well, if you look at the famous photograph of the street in New York in 1900. There's one car, and everything else is horse-pulled carriages. 1910, there's not a single horse in the photograph, and it's all cars. That's what's happening now with electric cars, and potentially that's what might happen with autonomous cars in the future.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: But I think it's a few years down the road yet.

Kiron: Yeah. Fair enough. No, super interesting. So you're at the Tier 1, who was their main OEM client at the time?

Ian: So they were actually a bigger company, TRW Automotive, a bigger company than Rover Group. One of the top five Tier 1s in the world. And so they supported every major OEM.

Kiron: Wow.

Ian: You know, Renaults, Fiats, Nissan, Toyota, Ford, Chrysler, GM, all the major companies.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: But they then went through a commercial issue. So they didn't just have automotive. They had communications, very big into satellites, and defense side of things, and they missed out on a contract on the defense, which led to the company being aggressively taken over by their competitor, and the competitor was very much focused on defense. So they broke the company up, and TRW Automotive was spun off as an independent business. They took an element of debt  with them from the purchase of Lucas, so they needed to clear that debt. So they wanted to focus on getting product out the door for three or four years. So they turned around to the tech center where I worked and said, "We don't want you to be doing R&D, but the American way of doing things is not to make you redundant and close it down. We'd, typically we'd mothball it. But actually, we see there's an opportunity as a consultancy here." So we then became an independent consultancy. Well, semi-independent, still owned by TRW, and it was called TRW Connect. And, so they needed to go from an organisation that had work requirements provided to it. You know, "We want you to come up with a solution for this. We want you to come up with a solution for that." To actually go and knock on people's doors and say, "We can do this for you." "Would you pay us to do it?"

Kiron: Yeah, yeah.

Ian: And they needed business development people, and some really clever people at TRW Connect, PhDs, you know, leading, leading in their field in the world. But the one thing that they perhaps didn't have was that commercial acumen and their ability to be social. And, the MD turned around and said, "Oh, Ian Rae, I've seen him in meetings, and his interaction with people is really good." You know, the customer speaks to him, and he doesn't run and hide in the cupboard like some of our PhDs. So I was offered the chance to take up a commercial role. And that's what I did. And I was headhunted by a competitor after four years of being successful at that. Spent three years working for them and then realised, yeah, I'm not... I love materials, I love engineering, and I'm getting further and further away from being involved in product development. And that's when I returned to JLR.

Kiron: Right. So what's something, before we get into the JLR thing, a lot of tier ones are obviously out to impress the OEMs. What's something from your experience working with a tier one and OEMs that tier ones often overlook that the OEMs are actually really looking to see?

Ian: Yeah. So my experience is, and they have to be, tier ones have to be careful that they don't give away what another OEM is doing on a program. But one of the frustrating things is when you find out that a product's launched on a competitor OEM vehicle, and the tier one supplying to that vehicle, and their technology, that they've introduced or a new style or a new way of doing things has been introduced, on the competitor OEM, but it's not necessarily been offered with regards to the current development you're working on. And you'd say to the tier, "Well, how come you did not offer that or not suggested that for this product?" And they'd come back and say, "Because you've not asked for it." And the OEM has to take some responsibility because it's a little bit like the OEM provides an answer, and what the OEM should be doing is asking the question.

Kiron: It's a bit of proactiveness on kind of-

Ian: Yeah ... on both sides a little bit. So instead of saying, "I want my car to do nought to 60 in six seconds, and I want it to have a range of 300 miles," What you'd perhaps wanna say is, "Well, okay then, what do you want?" Well, actually, this is a car that is gonna be used as a luxury vehicle. And, its use case actually, although it's got a range of 300 miles and could do nought to 60 in six seconds, actually most people are gonna use it for driving very locally. So actually, what you should be defining is what do you want of the product, not answering the question to begin with. Not specifying something.

Kiron: Right. Okay.

Ian: An anecdote I use perhaps to describe this better is, again, my love of aerospace. Back in the '30s, the RAF needed a new fighter, put a specification out that said it needs to fly at this height, have this amount of guns, be this fast, and it should be a biplane, and it should do this, et cetera. And they launched the Hawker Fury, and at the same time, Supermarine had a monoplane seaplane that broke the... It won the Blue Riband fastest aircraft in the world event, won the races three years in a row, and was faster, 100 miles an hour faster than the Hawker Fury. And the RAF said, "Well, how come ours...?" Again, said, "Well, you didn't ask for that. We met your specification." So it's really clear that the customer needs to be clear what they're after.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah.

Ian: And the tier needs to really make sure they get to the crux.

Kiron: Asking the right questions.

Ian: Absolutely.

Kiron: Yeah. No that makes sense. Some good advice there. So then we get to JLR.So what year is it that you joined JLR?

Ian: So I returned in 2011.

Kiron: Okay. What was that like? 'Cause obviously they did a huge, huge journey you were part of then.

Ian: Absolutely. I mean, I struggled when I left what was Rover Group and joined TRW. Really, really missed Rover Group. But in 2011, I then realised when I returned to JLR that it was the best thing that could have happened to me. It made me more rounded as a person. I was a better engineer through experiences. I'd learned a lot.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: So when I started at JLR, it was great. There were colleagues that I met up with again and started to work with again from my time in Rover. Some of them still called me, "It's young Ian", even though I didn't feel that young at the time. Yeah, it was great and you know, the compliments I got from them for how I had matured and the engineer I'd become.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: And it was just great to be working on product again.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah. 

Ian: And really great product.

Kiron: And some really exciting products as well.

Ian: Absolutely.

Kiron: What was your thoughts when obviously the whole Jaguar rebrand came along, and discussion about the new direction? Were you... I assume that's something you were probably part of.

Ian: So, yeah, I've worked on some really iconic cars, the Evoque. I mean, the Range Rover and the Discovery were cars that I worked on, when we were Rover Group. And Jaguar as a brand, it's a fantastic brand. The difficulty was finding cars that the customers wanted, a Jaguar customer wanted. But also the brand needed to find more than just Jaguar customers, needed to make new customers, and it was a very crowded marketplace. So, when we first saw the new Jaguar that are now in development and, and the first one's about to be released soon-

Kiron: How close to the concept that we've all seen do you think the production vehicle's gonna be?

Ian: Well JLR actually, without giving too much away, JLR didn't necessarily do pure concept cars. They would release a style or a concept that was very close to the final image.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: Not necessarily the same, so it didn't give a... But it would have design clues of the DNA of the product.

Kiron: So it's gonna look pretty mega then.

Ian: It's gonna be, yeah.

Kiron: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And the target market, you said they need to find new clients.

Ian: Yeah, yeah.

Kiron: What is that demographic that they're after?

Ian: The brand is going slightly up again in the luxury. I mean, you'd have to ask marketing people at JLR what the target is, but certainly the vehicle was great to work on when I was at JLR. I'm sure it's gonna be a great success.

Kiron: So were you excited about it when, when you heard about this new direction?

Ian: Absolutely.

Kiron: Or it was something you were keen to get involved in?

Ian: Yeah. I mean, I'm about to start my 37th year in industry, which is quite scary. And in the last 10 years, there's been so much change in the industry all at the same time, like never before. And what I mean by that is electrification, the connected systems. The vehicles are changing so much.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah.

Ian: You know, diesel engines disappearing, petrol engines disappearing, what cars are able to do now, and in the future. All that came at once. The environmental question came upon us, and the environmental directives. So, automotive OEMs needed to grow and change very quickly. So, when the Jaguar direction was presented to us, it was really exciting.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah.

Ian: When you saw the cars in the design studio, what the concept was, was to then become the final car. Yeah, really exciting because there was- All that change meant that it was fresh. We weren't reinventing the same thing.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: What I mean by that is, you know, understanding new materials, understanding new uses for materials, lightweighting, et cetera. Whereas in the early days, we were perhaps the same materials in a different shape in a different car.

Kiron: So you speak very highly about JLR-

Ian: Absolutely ...

Kiron: and the direction they're going in.

Ian: Yeah.

Kiron: Why'd you leave?

Ian: To establish really, Forseven was set up.

Kiron: Okay.

Ian: And they were a clean sheet of paper.

Kiron: So what point in time did you know about Forseven and the-

Ian: So, I left JLR in March 2025. And we were made aware of Forseven about 12 months beforehand as a new startup company.

Kiron: The CEO's ex-JLR, right?

Ian: That's correct, yes.

Kiron: So is that someone you had a relationship with?

Ian: I had met Nick Collins in programs. He was very senior in the business. So, sort of thing that if you were presenting to Nick Collins, then it was program stuff.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: So it was more the number of JLR people who were talking about this exciting project and moving across to Forseven, which was to set up a new electric, a luxury car brand. And what excited me was, I had even more responsibility across the car. So I was very much cockpit and interior-focused in JLR. I had whole car responsibility at Forseven, in non-metallics, and was defining strategy for the whole car, working on concepts and supporting architecture right at the beginning. So a couple of concepts that, on CAD that would never see the light of day was-

Kiron: Had the acquisition of McLaren happened at this point?

Ian: Not at that time.

Kiron: It's quite a brave move then because you're going from JLR, super established, well known, to speaking freely, this new company that no one's heard about. No one knows what they're doing.

Ian: Yep. It was-

Kiron: So was it the excitement of the unknown? I mean, you must've been apprehensive about that move.

Ian: I had the opportunity to, to have left earlier than I did, but I did, I waited, until March before I actually left.

Kiron: Right.

Ian: Because, you've gotta be... It's a startup company, and a lot of startup companies that have fallen by the wayside trying to do electrification.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah.

Ian: But I did my research into the company. The people that left JLR to go there were good people that I knew. Right. And I trusted them. Still trust them. And yeah, so it was an exciting opportunity to, you know, when it's a new company like that, the levels of management and the decision-making levels are less, and decisions can be made quicker. And you know, it was a new way of rather than carrying over existing processes and evolving existing processes, it's a clean sheet of paper. As I say, we could start again.

Kiron: Is it a fair comparison to what Geely have done with Lotus? Was that kind of what Forseven were doing with McLaren? It's easier to sell a new car with a McLaren badge on it? Or what was the strategy behind that?

Ian: So, yeah… Very much the intent wasn't to sell it as a Forseven product. There was gonna be a brand. The volumes were intended to be higher than a Lotus, or even Polestar type. But, the owners of Forseven, CYVN, Abu Dhabi Finance Company, they also had purchased 25% of NIO, Chinese electric vehicle company. So it was a technology transfer partnership there and working very closely with NIO colleagues to put state-of-the-art technology into the Forseven vehicles.

Kiron: Right.

Ian: And because there was no preconceived, "This is how we're gonna manufacture the cars", we could approach exact... You know, JLR are very much aluminum, very successful aluminum structures. But we could approach our vehicles with new technologies, thermoplastic composites, look at multi, mixed material, structures and how you potentially put the vehicle together, maybe not necessarily designed the same way as a high volume JLR product. So it was really exciting from that point of view. And then the opportunity for CYVN came along to actually purchase McLaren and they purchased the Formula 1 team as well. And Nick Collins is CEO of McLaren. We merged in October of last year, and we are now McLaren Automotive. Forseven, has ended as a company.

Kiron: Because of that merger plan. 

Ian: Because of the merger.

Kiron: Right. Okay.

Ian: Obviously McLaren is a much stronger brand. And it's a known brand.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: And we've got a very clear direction of what product is, not necessarily electrification.  It's the right powertrain for the product.

Kiron: So are we thinking more hybrid rather than full electric?

Ian: It could be whatever that product needs.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah.

Ian: Yeah.

Kiron: No problem. So are you excited, and should we as the public be excited about what McLaren are gonna be putting into the market over the near future?

Ian: Absolutely. Very exciting model plan.

Kiron: Yeah.

Ian: And next five or six years, absolutely. The target is to be the number one luxury brand in the world.

Kiron: Wow.

Ian: The products that are planned and some of the concepts I get to look at and see are very exciting if you're a car buff.

Kiron: Yeah, yeah. I am, so I'm, I'm looking forward to, to seeing what's to come from McLaren, and obviously wish you all the best with that journey. 

Ian: Thank you very much. 

Kiron: Before we finish, gotta finish on our segment. Made or Broken. So it's quick-fire questions. Don't think too much about it, just what first comes to mind. Back yourself or seek reassurance?

Ian: Back myself.

Kiron: Specialise or stay broad?

Ian: Specialise.

Kiron: Be liked or be respected?

Ian: Be respected.

Kiron: Speak up or stay quiet?

Ian: Speak up.

Kiron: Innovation or consistency?

Ian: Innovation.

Kiron: Routine or variety?

Ian: Variety.

Kiron: Perfect. Thank you very much, Ian.

Ian: Thank you very much. 

Kiron: Thank you very much for listening, guys. That's been another episode of Made. Thank you. And stay tuned for the next episode.