Test track's troubles

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 17

Test track's troubles

Financial clouds are darkening the future of an organisation which has probably done more to make British cars competitive in world markets than any other: the Motor Industry Research Association, at Lindley, near Nuneaton. M.1.R.A., as it is known throughout the world, was set up after the Second World War to provide British car manufacturers with test and development facilities simulating the worst conditions their products could expect to encounter overseas, writes John Langley in the “Daily Telegraph.”

At the 650-acre proving ground, prototypes can be pounded over “killer” surfaces or driven full bore for hour after hour on the 2.8 mile high-speed track to make sure that the production models will not fall to pieces in some farflung comer of the globe. It is no exaggeration to say that without this kind of endurance testing, British vehicles would be practically unsaleable in many export markets. Ironically, it is this very success which has indirectly put M.I.R.A.’s, finances into the melting pot. Ford, and Vauxhall, two of its biggest contributors, have built their own proving grounds at vast expense and are channelling more and more of their development testing to them.

Although both these American-owned companies still make considerable use of M.I.R.A.’s more specialised facilities, the Lindley proving ground will obviously be of less value to them in future. Understandably, they are reluctant to continue what they regard as subsidising British Leyland (which has no comparable independent facilities) and other competitors. They are, therefore, seeking changes in the financing arrangements from which M.LR.A. gets its income. . Ford has proposed that the existing grant system should be replaced by arrangements under which individual manufacturers would contribute according to the use they make of M.I.R.A. facilities. Until now the annual grant has been paid by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which levies the money from its members according to their annual turnover. A further complication is that the Ministry of Technology also makes a sizeable grant to M.I.R.A. which is tied directly to the size of the motor industry’s contribution.

The sums involved are hardly enormous by modem standards; M.I.R.A.’s total income last year was £538,000, of which manufacturers contributed roughly a half, and the Ministry of Technology about a quarter.