What I'd Do Differently: Mike Flewitt

C/D: Considering you’re from Liverpool, does everyone ask you about soccer and the Beatles?

MF: Not in the U.K., but I do get it when I’m abroad. I’m always asked if I’m a red or a blue—a Liverpool FC or an Everton fan—and whether I like the Beatles. I’m a red, and yeah, I do like the Beatles.

C/D: Is it fair to say you started at the bottom with Ford?

MF: I had started university, but I didn’t enjoy it. I stayed for one year and left. I got a job at the Ford factory in Halewood, which was good money in Liverpool at the time. I was fitting parcel shelves to the Ford Escort, the first hatchback version. I liked it and applied for a technical apprenticeship, so I got trained in engineering and management. I came off that three years later as a foreman.

C/D: How did you get on with the famously militant unions there?

MF: They were very powerful. If they disagreed with management, they would strike or just stop working. We had a lot of disputes; it was incredibly confrontational. I went out to find my car smashed up once. I was a foreman, which made me a manager, even if I was the most junior manager imaginable.

C/D: After a stint at Rolls-Royce, you found yourself in Sweden running AutoNova, a joint venture between Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR and Volvo. Then you bounced back to Ford . . . Did you find yourself getting dizzy?

MF: TWR was a great business, but Tom also owned Arrows, the Formula 1 team, and they were struggling. We were lending money across from TWR and when Arrows failed, those debts became worthless and brought down TWR, too. Ford contacted me and I went to Cologne to see a guy called John Fleming, who was VP of manufacturing but had been my plant manager at Halewood. I became European quality director, and although I’m not taking the credit, we were building amazingly high-quality cars in Europe at the time. We were constantly benchmarking ourselves, and it was probably only Honda at a comparable level.

C/D: You might have reached the top at Ford, so why did you step off the escalator for McLaren?

MF: It was a hard decision. I was approached by a recruiter about the COO role at McLaren and I said I wasn’t interested, but then they called me back and said, “Will you just have a chat with Ron Dennis?” That was a huge mistake because Ron Dennis is the most persuasive person in the world.

C/D: You were quickly made CEO of McLaren. Having worked for large and small carmakers, what is the same and what’s different?

MF: The key is having good processes, that’s the same regardless of size, but also having great people and being able to motivate them. When I left Ford of Europe, I nominally had around 44,000 people working for me across 23 factories, but really I had about 10 people who reported directly to me, and everything had to be passed up and down through the chain. What comes out of the difference in scale are much closer relationships and the ability to shorten the whole process. If the directors here want to have a meeting first thing in the morning, we just do that. It’s not like having to arrange a meeting in a month’s time or flying to Detroit to have it.

C/D: How do you respond when McLaren is compared to Ferrari?

MF: It’s flattering that in less than six years from launch, people are talking about us in the same breath as Ferrari or Porsche, but I do think our cars are differently focused. We never set out to produce a better Ferrari; we set out to produce a McLaren. Our focus is absolutely on driving pleasure. A McLaren isn’t a status symbol or a lifestyle acquisition. In 50 years, I hope people are doing it the other way around: “Is Ferrari getting close to McLaren?”

C/D: You own and race several classic Lotuses and a McLaren 570S GT4. You often compete against your wife. How is that?

MF: Humiliating! We haven’t raced against each other in McLarens yet, but she will probably be quicker than me. She’s extremely good and very competitive. In the classic cars, I’d say we’re about the same.

C/D: Looking back, is there anything you’d do differently?

MF: I enjoyed my time at TWR, but it wasn’t a highlight of my career. I had to oversee making about half the people redundant before we sold the company. I’d turned down an offer from Ford to go there; if I’d taken that I’d have been at Ford earlier. That would have been smarter from a career point of view, but it all worked out in the end.

C/D: You once said that even if Mark Fields quit as Ford CEO, you wouldn’t be interested in the job. When he left, did you reconsider?

MF: I love Ford, and if I didn’t work at McLaren, then Ford would probably still be my choice. I worked for some great people there. I’m still in touch with Alan Mulally; he’s a hero of mine. But I love McLaren more than any other job I’ve had. I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather do. If the shareholders let me, I’ll do this until I retire.