Mister Mac
PICTURE IN your mind’s eye the boss of a supercar company. Razor thin, perfect hair, tanned a leathery Monaco brown, poised in a perfectly cut Zegna business suit. Luca di Montezemolo, the legendary leader of Ferrari, is the archetype. Or the implausibly fashionable Stephan Winkelmann, who ran Lamborghini and is now at Bugatti.
But McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt is an entirely different proposition; a ruddyfaced, wispy-haired Liverpudlian who began his working life building Ford Escorts on the Halewood assembly line in the early 1980s. He seems a more jeans and tees kind of guy.
“That’s a little bit where I still am,” Flewitt tells Wheels.
Just a little bit, though. By the time he was wooed away to McLaren Automotive in 2012, just two years after it had been established, Flewitt was a Ford corporate officer overseeing all of its European manufacturing.
“I’ve still got my production report from my last day at Ford Motor Company,” he reveals.
