Just a handful of manufacturers are synonymous with ‘supercars’, with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, McLaren and Tesla having created some of the most famous and sought-after models. However, a UK firm is now seeking to carve out its own niche in the luxury automotive market. Briggs Automotive Company (BAC) has sped onto the supercar scene with its single-seater, road-legal sports car, Mono, breaking records and hitting headlines. Two of its most notable accolades to date centre on petrolhead television series Top Gear, with the Mono delivering the fifth-fastest track speed of 1:14.30 on the programme, as well as winning the first and only ‘Stig’s car of the year’ at the Top Gear awards in 2011.
This luxury car brand comes, perhaps surprisingly, from Liverpool, giving a boost to the city, the local supply chain and the Made in Britain brand. Founded in 2009, by brothers Neill and Ian Briggs, the firm started out in Cheshire and moved to Liverpool in 2013, drawn by the proximity to automotive and aerospace expertise and to suppliers in the North West. The firm now wants the Mono brand to become synonymous with Liverpool. It’s clear from talking to locals that Liverpudlians are proud of the brand, and it is becoming very much a part of the city’s identity. Even the local airport lets the company test its cars on the runway between flights.
When the Briggs brothers embarked on Mono, they hoped that, at the very least, the vehicle would work as a shining example of what they could achieve at their automotive design consultancy. They launched the car in 2011 at the Retro Classic show, a week before the Geneva Motor Show. Neill Briggs, director of product development, says: “We thought it was a little car, off the radar as far as the automotive world was concerned. Little did we know that six weeks later we’d have press enquiries from 52 countries, and 34 sales enquiries from all over the world.”
The Mono is built from lightweight, ultra-strong carbon fibre around the central driver’s steel safety cell. It features a semi-stress-bearing longitudinally mounted engine along the spine of the car, and a fully stress-bearing gearbox section made by British company Hewland, into which all the suspension loads are fed.
Inspired by F1
“Normally in cars, an engine and gearbox sits in what we call the sub-frame, a support structure that is then bolted into the body structure,” says Briggs. “All these things add weight, complexity, cost. On a car that is focused on performance, we don’t need any of those.”
This design replicates a Formula One-style layout, which over the past 50 years has moved the engine progressively from the front to being mid-mounted, then transverse-mounted.
The engine used at first was a 2.3-litre Cosworth race unit which delivered on performance, reaching 0-60mph in just 2.8 seconds and a maximum speed of 170mph.
The 2016 Mono model now features a 2.5-litre Mountune engine. This four-cylinder unit produces 305bhp (227.4kW) – that’s up 25bhp on the previous 2.3-litre Cosworth engine. It also means that the newer car weighs in at just 580kg, giving 526bhp per tonne and signalling the potential for new Top Gear records to be broken in the near future.
BAC Mono works in partnership with its British suppliers, says Briggs. “We are very collaborative in our approach,” he says. “We have to be as a small firm.”
A recent example is a project carried out with Surface Transform – a supplier based nearby in Ellesmere Port – which developed a carbon sonic brake for the car in just four months. Available as an optional alternative to the standard steel discs, the carbon brake retails at £8,250. It provides a 50% weight saving on the standard Mono brakes. “That translates to a performance gain of two seconds a lap. That is an absolute age. To be able to purchase that off the shelf and bolt it on your car is a huge enhancement,” says Briggs.
However, the luxury car market isn’t all about performance – it’s also about style and driver experience. So the Mono has been designed to optimise the driving position in the middle, central to the wheels and the balance of the car. With no roof and no windscreen, the car is visually striking, and fits the original brief which stated that it must look like an F1 car that is as much at home on the road as on the racetrack.
The carbon-fibre body, exposed mechanical rear and one-off paint designs make each car distinctive. Ian Briggs, the firm’s director of design, says: “It takes 160 hours to spray paint one car, as the carbon fibre needs to be reviewed and sanded lightly. It could be more than 200 hours if we put on a complicated 3D paint scheme.”
Big on customisation
But where the BAC Mono truly sets itself apart from its competitors is in its level of personalisation for customers. This is achieved using some of the latest manufacturing techniques. Drivers work closely from day one with the firm’s design team to get the materials, paint jobs and finishes they desire, using a suite of Autodesk tools including 3D visualisation software VRed, Sketchbook Pro, Alias and Maya. Customers can even choose to employ the skills of a nearby business in Runcorn to weave a logo into the carbon fibre – according to Neill Briggs it’s the only company in the world offering that service.
BAC Mono also boasts some one-of-a-kind services. “We are the only car company in the world that does a made-to-measure seat and steering wheel,” says Neill Briggs. “The seat is moulded to your body and is made by Tillett Race Car, a company that makes all the F1 seats as well as those for the FIA World Endurance Championship touring cars and Indy cars.”
The seat is moulded to the entire body length of the driver, evenly distributing their weight to optimise comfort and safety.
The steering wheel is also moulded precisely to the driver’s hands. The individual is asked to grip Brazilian clay, which is used in the car industry for sculpting. It is then scanned and sent to a UK manufacturing partner, which 3D prints the one-of-a-kind wheel. It’s then sent to seven different suppliers, which fit it with everything needed to make it road-legal, such as indicator lights, warnings and a starter button. It has racing displays and a chronograph with accurate lap timing facility. In addition, the steering wheel can feature logos and any hide finish the driver prefers, such as matt, gloss or carbon. “It will be the only steering wheel in the world that is like that,” says Neill Briggs.
With all this attention being lavished on the look of the steering wheel, there is little else in the minimalist interior. The interior side panels and white element are trimmed in a super-tough material that was first developed for nursing homes. A mixture of Austrian Boxmark upholstery leather and Xtreme outdoor leather, the material can withstand exposure to the elements.
Other innovative materials include a special rubber compound for the tyres, created by Kumho, that is designed to work with the Mono’s low weight and optimised pushrod suspension. BAC Mono is also thinking of trying out self-healing nano-plastic as an optional finish for the body, from a potential supplier in California, says Ian Briggs.
However, all this personal service, finishes and materials come at a premium. With the starting price tag of £125,000, the Mono is a car for the serious collector.
Complex process
The personalised nature of the vehicle has had a massive impact on the firm’s supply chain. Technology such as additive manufacturing has made it commercially viable for the firm to create products including the made-to-measure steering wheels, says Neill Briggs. PLM360 software is used to manage the process. This streamlining is essential, says Ian Briggs, as the car has 1,200 parts and everything is outsourced. “We’ve got around £800,000 worth of stock at any one time. We’ve got about the same amount of value out with our suppliers – we try to get them to hold some of our stock until we need it to bring it in.” The car is assembled in BAC Mono’s pristine factory.
Each car has its own production order, which is sent from sales to the manufacturing team. Dubbed the ‘doctor’s notes’, the production order triggers the procurement team to chase the parts needed. From the customer’s initial order to receipt of the finished product takes between nine months and a year.
But just how large is the market for these expensive vehicles? Neill Briggs claims that this is an expanding sector. So far BAC Mono sells most cars in North America.
Mono is exported to 23 countries. South-east Asia is a growing market for the firm, and it now has distributors in Japan, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.
The company is already in profit. It makes 40 cars a year, and over the next few years will be ramping this up to 150. There is talk of moving to larger premises as the business grows, and of diversifying into three-seater designs. Developing the supply chain will be key as the firm boosts production, says Neill Briggs.
He adds: “As a business we’re innovative on all levels, with local, regional, national and international impact. In addition, 90% of cars we make are exported, so it’s great for UK plc. It’s what makes us one of a kind.”