NORTHERN SOUL
Award-winning restoration specialist based in Shropshire
A relAtively young organisation when compared with the others here, Classic Motor Cars is a restoration firm that is celebrating its 27th anniversary in August, having been founded by a group of passionate Jaguar enthusiasts in 1993.
the company, based in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, has its origins in the restoration of significant classic Jaguar models, with early products including the SS100, all early XK models and the e-type.
today, the company’s remit has expanded to include the expert restoration of classic Aston Martin, Bentley, Ferrari and lancia models, as well as a selection of more modern machinery. Current projects include the nut-and-bolt restoration of the Aston Martin Bulldog, a wedge-shaped supercar concept from 1979 that never made production.
CMC’s focus on its staff has helped set it apart in a hotly contested market: an apprenticeship scheme started in 2015 has since trained a new generation of craftspeople. in 2016, CMC’s chairman Peter Newmark transferred a majority shareholding into the employee-owned Classic Motor Cars ltd employee Shareholder trust.
Accolades include two restoration of the year awards and a Specialist of the year Award from Auto express’ sister title, Octane.
BRITAIN has a well established ‘motorsport belt’ that runs through the Midlands, containing a number of Formula One teams as well as dozens of engineering specialists and the country’s premier race venue, Silverstone. But a couple of hundred miles further north, there’s another notable firm that has grown into a worldbeater from humble roots in Cumbria – while staying there. This is M-Sport, the operation run by former British Rally Champion, Malcolm Wilson OBE.
M-Sport has its origins in Wilson’s own rally exploits. But by the mid-nineties, it was turning out Escort Cosworths that were more competitive than those run by Ford’s own factory team. So in 1996, Ford elected to hand responsibility for its works rally campaign over to Wilson.
Overnight, the deal meant that M-Sport was soon going to outgrow its workshops at Wilson’s home near Cockermouth. But when the search started for new premises, all 38 sites that we considered were also in Cumbria. “It’s always just been me,” Wilson says. “Even when I was driving, people used to tell me that I’d need to move south to be successful. But I’ve always felt that I could do anything from this part of the world, which I class as home. I’ve never seen the distance as being an obstacle; in fact, I’ve always thought I could create a better facility in this part of the world for less money than it would cost moving down south.”
He found the basis for this ambition at Dovenby Hall, a former mental hospital outside Cockermouth with plenty of land for development. M-Sport bought it in January 1998, and within barely two years had transformed it into a state-of-theart engineering base, alongside the Grade II listed building used for M-Sport’s offices and administration. “It ticked all the boxes,” Wilson recalls. “With the building and 115 acres of land, I knew I had the scope to really build something.”
Ford ended its official factory World Rally Championship campaign in 2012, but M-Sport’s core business remains rallying; the company carried on regardless without full manufacturer support, designing and building new models to fit the regulation changes over the past 10 years. This single operation in Cumbria took on the might of Toyota and Hyundai, in other words. And in 2017 and 2018 it won, securing back-to-back driver’s titles with Sebastien Ogier –
“When I was driving, people told me that I’d need to move south to be successful. But I’ve always felt that I could do anything from this part of the world”
MALCOLM WILSON M-Sport
a fitting achievement after years of near-misses with stars such as Colin McRae and Marcus Gronholm.
The WRC is but a shop window for M-Sport, however, because the company has created roughly half a dozen other specs of Fiesta to fill nearly every category in rallying. Indeed, the output is prodigious to the point that rallying is as dependent on M-Sport as the firm is on racing itself. As we chat, Wilson does a bit of maths and concludes that M-Sport has, to date, sold around 350 Fiesta R5s (left), the car that competes in the second tier of rallying (and costs an average of £200,000 a pop). That’s a
production line that many niche sports car manufacturers would love to match – and one that has racked up countless regional championships. Equally, the firm’s satellite operation in Krakow, Poland, sold more than 100 Fiesta R2s in 2019 alone. That’s a car targeted at rally beginners, supporting the grassroots of the sport. It’s hard to imagine any other firm with this breadth of interest in any one motorsport discipline. “It’s at the heart of what we do,” Wilson admits. “If you think about it, we’ve helped to keep WRC on the map.”
But Wilson recognised early on that M-Sport would have to diversify to thrive. So the company moved into
circuit racing in 2013, collaborating with Bentley to develop a GT3 endurance racer based on the Continental GT – and extending that arrangement to build a new generation of the car in 2019. M-Sport’s own Conti GT3 entry won the renowned Bathurst 12 Hours in Australia earlier this year.
Other projects have included maintaining the electric I-Pace racers used in Jaguar’s one-make series, and launching a successful line-up of custom Ford Transit vans under the MS-RT brand. Wilson gives a nervous cough when we ask how long it can be before the firm moves into either breathed-on road cars or a bespoke creation of his own. “I won’t pretend we haven’t thought about it,” he acknowledges.
Earlier this summer, M-Sport landed the contract to supply the new ‘control engine’ for the British Touring Car Championship when it switches to electrified power in 2022. The deal to produce the motors, which are used by more than half of the current grid, is for an initial five years, giving additional stability to the engineering and manufacturing sides of the M-Sport operation. “I was so proud to win that tender,” Wilson says. “The existing supplier Swindon has been doing a great job, so we knew we had to put together a very competitive proposal, not only technically but also on costs. And we’ve had great support from the teams.”
This varied portfolio of activities enabled M-Sport to develop the Dovenby site further, and in late autumn this year the company will open the Evaluation Centre, a 2.5km test track with accompanying offices and manufacturing areas – even a hotel, once the hospitality industry has recovered enough to support it. Local grants have contributed around £4m to the project – but M-Sport has sunk in the rest of the £20m required itself.
“We’ve been hoping that the exclusivity we can offer up here, with no prying eyes, will make it attractive to car manufacturers who want to come and test new cars. There’s nowhere else in the UK that can really offer that,” Wilson says. “There’s been a huge amount of interest, so while it’s been quite a challenge to bring it together, especially with a bit of a coronavirus delay, it’s a very exciting time.” It is also likely to prove a key asset as M-Sport tries, like many engineering consultancies, to recover from motorsport’s 2020 lockdown.
Twenty years after Dovenby Hall first opened, has Wilson ever regretted keeping his company in a region that’s not exactly renowned as an engineering hotbed? “Never,” he states. “Genuinely not. We’ve never had an issue in terms of getting people to come this far north. You do get the ambitious young engineers and designers who fancy going to Formula One, and we are classed as a training ground by some of the leading teams there. I think they seem to see that if someone’s worked here for a couple of years, they’re probably alright. But I’ve still got most of my key people still with me.”
Wilson himself? Now 64, he’s spent recent weeks liaising with staff – some face to face, some via conference call – to promise that he won’t contemplate retirement until M-Sport has been steered through the choppy waters that so many engineering and motorsport companies currently face. “I thought it might take a couple of years,” he says, “but as things go on I reckon it’ll be more like five. I’ve told them all that I’ll be here until we’re sorted. I’m not going anywhere.”
“We hope that the exclusivity we can offer, with no prying eyes, will make it attractive to manufacturers who want to test new cars”
MALCOLM WILSON M-Sport