Red Bull Racing's Dutch driver Max Verstappen (front) competes during the 2025 Formula One Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Monza, near Milan, Italy
McLaren is putting £450 million into its Woking technology centre and creating around 1,000 jobs, in one of the more striking manufacturing investment stories to come out of the UK automotive sector this year. It arrives at a moment when the industry's overall trajectory points the other way. making the announcement as much a signal about the state of British car manufacturing as it is a story about McLaren itself.
A Factory Bet, Not Just a Balance-Sheet Move
The investment is centred on McLaren's technology centre in Woking, Surrey, sitting close to the site where the company already manufactures its vehicles, with reports indicating some of the roles will also be split with a satellite supply plant in Sheffield. That detail matters: this isn't capital parked in a headquarters upgrade or a marketing push, it's aimed squarely at manufacturing, research and development capacity. The 1,000 new roles will include direct employees as well as indirect and agency workers, potentially growing McLaren's current workforce of roughly 2,500 by around 40%.
