Ex-McLaren, Alpine and Lotus bosses join British start-up Longbow

Longbow, the British start-up which revealed a £65,000 sub-tonne electric sports car earlier this year, has brought in former bosses of McLaren, Alpine, and Lotus as it pushes to bring its car to market. Mike Flewitt, Michael van der Sande and Dan Balmer have all joined the firm’s new advisory board, which co-founder Daniel Davey – a former Tesla and Lucid engineer – dubbed the “holy trinity”. Founded in 2023, Longbow announced its first project, an open-roof Speedster and Roadster coupé, in March. They will be built on a bespoke aluminium architecture and offer a 0-62mph time of 3.5sec, a 275-mile range, and tip the scales at just 895kg. Davey doubled down on plans to build the cars in the UK with UK-made parts – everything bar battery cells. A production location is expected to be announced later this summer and first deliveries are planned for the end of 2027. “The UK is our identity,” he said. “It's an important part of our story and why we're doing this. The British sports car industry and British sports cars are things I've always had on my wall since a small kid and have always been very important to me. And there's an opportunity to do something really special here.” Such a task is daring, added Davey, which is why the new advisory board was created to eliminate issues. “You have plans and you have ideas, but what you need to be able to do is sense check each of those with people who've done it before,” he said. “We've got people like Michael and Mike who've had those experiences that we can just ask 'how do we do this?', and they might say ‘this was horrible these five times [we experienced it], so do it this way’. That informs the plan that we already have.” Fellow founder Mark Tapsott, formerly of BYD, said it was “car people building cars”, adding: “We wanted to work with the right partners.” A complimentary note from former McLaren boss Flewitt is how he got involved with Longbow, he told Autocar. “It all started with the car,” he said. “It was the car that attracted me first. And then, after talking with Mark and Daniel, it was the company [that attracted me]. He added: “I have a personal passion for lightweight sports cars. The ethos I brought to McLaren was all around engagement, lightweight and the driving characteristics of the cars there, which I felt marked McLaren out. “You look at [the Longbow] product: it's a compact sports car; it's built around driver engagement; it's a good size; it emphasises lightweight. These are all the characteristics which, frankly, I feel are starting to be lost in the industry. And to see somebody coming in with leading-edge technology but with those attributes at the forefront is quite novel, and it really stood out to me.” However, Flewitt emphasised that the car needs to be viable – which he said was his first bit of advice he gaveto Longbow. “You need to look at it from the position of the market,” he said. “The number of times I had to say to Ron [Dennis, former McLaren chairman] ‘look, we're not building cars for 60-year-old Englishmen, we're building cars for a global market, we've got to understand what that market is… “You're building something that is going to sell, and it isn't just building something you want personally.” This was a point echoed by van der Sande, a former boss of Alpine, Lucid Europe and JLR’s Special Vehicles division. “Whilst all cars have got four wheels and a steering wheel, the method for developing and building cars and taking them to market, frankly, is not the same,” he said. “Having done this a few times, there are definitely arbitrations, things to be done around complexity, attributes, tooling, sourcing, manufacturing, methods, automation, materials. "There's many, many, many things that are very alien to mass manufacturers. Even at Alpine, I spent half my time explaining to the big world of Renault around us why it was different. "It is about making the right arbitrations, finding the right alliances, suppliers and partners.”

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Ex-McLaren, Alpine and Lotus bosses join British start-up Longbow

Longbow plans to bring a pair of lightweight electric sports cars to market at £65,000 in late 2027

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Ex-McLaren, Alpine and Lotus bosses join British start-up Longbow

Longbow plans to bring a pair of lightweight electric sports cars to market at £65,000 in late 2027

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