Mar 2020 - 01: British niche vehicles hit top gear

The British have always been good at sports cars.

While high volume car brands like British Leyland and Austin Rover have been consigned to the history books, names like Morgan, Lotus, Caterham and Lister hold a global reputation for well-built, British, two-seated driving heaven.

Look deeper into the niche vehicle industry and you will find far more than a handful of car makers with a racing pedigree, however.

From the micro, carbon fibre-framed Axon Automotive concept car to Jaguar Classic Works, the spin-off firm rebuilding classic Jaguars from the 1960s onwards.

These include the X-K-S-S and E-types, and some new electric sports car models, UK niche automotive is an inventive, fluid and exciting sub-sector of manufacturing.

Automotive body SMMT, The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says the specialist car manufacturing sector is worth £3.6 billion p/a and employs over 11,000 people.

The segment is also both preserving craft skills and investing in new technology, such as the switch to electrification and new methods of forming and bonding metal alloys and wood to keep weight down and allow higher speeds.

Racing car company Lister manufactures replication two-seater sports cars using the same machines, tooling and even some of the same people as the original company founded by Brian Lister in 1954. Who said engineers want to retire?

David Brown Automotive or D-A-B in Silverstone hand-builds exquisite and throaty coupés, with an Aston Martin pedigree but with US-Chevvy Corvette style grunt.

The Speedback GT Silverstone has a 5.0-litre supercharged V8 that can produce 601bhp.

Each car is built using thousands of man-hours of labour and prices start from an eyebrow-raising £600,000, reaching north of £750,000 for the fully specced Speedback GT Silverstone Edition.

D-A-B also makes reproduction original Minis, and the new Mini Remastered O-selli Edition is its latest model.

The Minis cost around £75,000 and are currently popular with Japanese and Hong Kong buyers, who the company says “have a fondness for high quality British, especially English, products,” There are no public plans for an electric powertrain version.

Cars made by Morgan Motor Company are the quintessential English two-seater classic sports car.

Morgan is 110-years old and still builds its cars from the same workshops, built on a hill, in The Malvern Hills in Worcestershire.

It currently produces five models, from the £82,000 flagship Morgan Plus Six with a CX-Generation aluminium platform, 3.0 litre turbocharged BMW engine / eight-speed automatic, to the 3-wheeler with 2.0 litre V-twin S&S engine, which sells for around £40,000.

Production in 2020 is forecast for between 900 and 1,000 units.

Morgan has developed bonding technology to house powerful engines in the strongest but lightest chassis.

The aluminium platform is bonded and riveted in a method perfected over decades, then the ash wood frame is bonded to this and finally “superformed” panels are placed over the frame.

The aluminium chassis has double the stiffness of the Aero 8 model but is much thinner, reducing weight to a tiny 97kg.

The head of marketing Toby Blythe, says, “At Morgan skilled craftspeople apply time-honoured techniques, and natural materials such as ash wood and leather, but at the same time, you’ll find bonded aluminium platforms, superformed panels, BMW powertrains and 3D printing.

The Plus Six, launched in 2019, represented a new era for Morgan, and has received a glowing reception and increased demand. 2020 marks a very important year for Morgan too – it sees the end of our steel chassis, as well as the launch of an all-new model.”
Electric switch

A large stake in Morgan was sold to Italian investor Investindustrial in 2019.

Ownership by big foreigners, while taking these classic marques out of all-British ownerships, means they have cash to invest in new technology, electrification and marketing for growth. 

A majority stake in Lotus by Chinese automotive Geely in 2018, which also owns the London Electric Vehicle Company that recently announced 100 new jobs to meet demand, meant investment in the iconic brand.

Lotus claims “the newest car facility in the world” to produce the firm’s latest model, an all-electric “hypercar” the Evija, which as of late February was in final prototype production to prepare for series production this summer.

Evija is part of Lotus’s Vision80 growth plan.

With production limited to 130 cars, the Evija is priced at a jaw-dropping £1.7m plus duties and taxes. 

CEO Phil Popham says, “Evija means ‘the first in existence’ and is the perfect name for our new car – it’s the first British all-electric hypercar, it’s our first electric offering and it’s the first new model under the stewardship of Geely.”

Lotus had made a loss for several years until 2017 and had changed its chief executive several times.

Today it’s looking up. Richard Yarrow, the communications at Lotus, says “2019 also saw further investment in future product plans and new facilities at Hethel in Norfolk and around the world; the development of a global dealer support strategy, and a sponsorship deal with Norwich City Football Club.” 

Fast, furious and FUN

For pure fun, look no further than Ariel. What’s not to like about this company?

It has stripped down car making to great engineering, and simple design, with no frills and fuss in excess bodywork, to achieve high speeds for the race-car Atom 4 and the on-road off road buggy, Nomad.

They also make a motorcycle, the Ace.

Employing 32 people, including nine in R&D, in Somerset, the company makes 100 cars a year and 25 motorbikes.

For a small business, all models have rave reviews from both auto and bike magazines; Auto Car gave the Atom a very rare 5-star score.

All cars can be customer-specced around a fixed engine with big list of options.

The superfast Atom – which does 0-60mph in 2.8 seconds! – uses a 2-point-0 K-twenty-C Honda 4-cylinder i-V-TEC, turbocharged engine while the Nomad uses a 2.4 K-twenty-four Honda i-V-TEC.

The company is always looking to retain strength in the frame but reduce weight.

Ariel’s Tom Siebert says “Cars are typically getting heavier and duller; our ethos is to move right away from that, strip the car back and keep them light and basic but most of all, fun.”

Prices for the Nomad start from £36,000 inc VAT, while the Atom 4 is nearly £40,000 and about 20% of product is exported.

Several factors make this a strong time for UK niche vehicle companies.

These include the decline of diesel and the rise of electric, with new market entrants with electric power expertise, low interest rates, overseas demand for British-made cars and pockets of funding to develop lighter, greener cars from Innovate UK and others.

As well as the sportscar brands covered here, in the niche segment consider the new Land Rover Defender to be manufactured soon by chemicals group IN-E-OS.

London-electric van company Arrival’s £85m investment from Hyundai and Kia.

Volta Trucks 7.5 and 8.5 tonne electric good vehicles, BAC in Liverpool which makes about 40, single-seat Formula-3 style road cars a year, among others sitting up and down the volume and technology curves.