Every street or race car McLaren has built since 1981 uses a carbon fiber tub. Now, McLaren will make them in-house.

The 12C's original tub from 2009.
 Building carbon fiber monocoques is a complicated and labor-intensive process, and while Christian von Koenigsegg can probably do it in his backyard by hand, even giants like the Volkswagen Group have to outsource the process to other companies. While the Bugatti Chiron's tub is made by racing firm Dallara, the Volkswagen XL1 hypermiler's and the Porsche 918 hypereverythinger's were produced by Carbo Tech in Salzburg, Austria. And so are all McLaren carbon tubs, but that will change by 2020.

The Woking-based company has used carbon fiber in every street and racing chassis it's designed since 1981, and likely won't alter that recipe until humanity comes up with an even superior material. Now, to bring those carbon fibers closer to home, they set up their new Composites Technology Centre next to the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield. There, McLaren's 200 new employees will use automated manufacturing techniques developed in conjunction with the AMRC.


McLaren says the new facility is due to start construction in early 2017 with the first pre-production carbon fiber chassis expected to be delivered in the second half of 2017. Full production is expected by 2020.

In 1993, the McLaren F1's carbon chassis took 4000 hours to make. In 2011, the MP4-12C's took just four hours.

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