car technology

McLaren’s new MP4-12C supercar

(TELEGRAPH) - Because a large number of clever people have spent a great deal of time designing a kit of parts that can be assembled by someone boasting the IQ of a Ginger Nut biscuit, building cars is - as anyone who’s spent time on a production line will attest - something of a doddle.

Think Pin the Tail on the Donkey without the blindfold; the only downside being that the mule is constantly on the move, albeit at Eeyore speed.

I’ve twice spent the day working in a car factory, and it’s about as much fun as a verucca. On both occasions it struck me that there are only three truly taxing challenges to be overcome.

The first is mind-numbing boredom, the second is a very real, Radio 2-sponsored danger of developing RKMI (Repetitive Katie Melua Injury), and the third is running a thick millipede of black mastic round the edge of a windscreen before squelching the glass home.

Every one of my efforts to master this ostensibly simple task rapidly came to resemble a cross between a Jackson Pollock canvas and everything that could possibly go wrong with a liquorice fondue. So if you’re currently running around in a Nissan with a somewhat limit field of forward vision, I can only apologise.

Given that McLaren Automotive’s new, £40 million Production Centre will be belting out as many examples of its MP4-12C supercar each year as Toyota’s Burnaston plant builds in three days flat - about 1,300 - and the chances of me getting a job on the production line fall into the fat chance category, such quality control issues are unlikely to plague the impending gleam of the achingly pretty MP4-12C, appearing en masse in a Premier League club car park near you from the spring of 2011.

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