THE SECRET SOURCE

It’s a well-kept secret that most low-volume, high-end cars contain third-party specialist engineering, often from the UK. Matt Prior looks around an industrial estate in Essex for clues

- Matt Prior

This is one of those stories that would be easier to tell if so much of it weren’t secret. Tecniq is the new name for a company formerly called ADP Special Products. If you weren’t aware of it either before or since its rebranding, don’t be surprised, but you will know lots of the cars that it has been involved with.

Not dissimilar to an engineering company called Envisage that has featured in Autocar before (and which recently released its own restomod of an Austin-Healey), this is a firm that big car makers turn to when they need help making limited volume, high-end cars – perhaps things outside their normal remit.

Often they’re for the sort of spin-off operations that involve initialisms. Tecniq represents some of “the power behind Q [Aston Martin], SVO [Jaguar Land Rover] and MSO [McLaren]”, says chief operating officer Tony Smith.

And its low-volume, high-value skills strike me as the sort of thing that the UK does well. I’ve spoken to several really niche manufacturers of late – Gunther Werks (first drive last week) and Smit (story to come) – and learned they all source components from British engineering companies.