Multimatic Launches New Special Vehicle and Racing Division
Multimatic has created a Special Vehicle Operations group (MSVO), the company announced. The new organization, led by Larry Holt, executive vice president MSVO, will be responsible for all vehicle engineering developments as was undertaken for the Ford GT, motorsports engineering projects like the Mazda DPi, and all race team operations, continuing the use of the Multimatic Motorsports identity. Additionally, low volume vehicle body/chassis manufacturing, carbon fiber part production and low volume niche component supply will also be incorporated within the new MSVO. Multimatic Motorsports will continue to operate on both sides of the Atlantic from dedicated facilities.
The Multimatic Engineering group will now be led by Jim Holland, an automotive engineering executive, with a focus on providing the industrial manufacturing groups of Multimatic with continued product and technology development while maintaining a close relationship with Holt and MSVO to assure a two-way flow of expertise, resource and technical culture.
Commenting on the restructuring, Multimatic President and Chief Operating Officer, Raj Nair, said: “Multimatic continues to grow, in both size and technical diversity and this restructuring means we can remain true to our decentralised, agile and innovative operating philosophy. Multimatic is capable of engineering and manufacturing at extremely low and extremely high levels of volume; as well as engineering and manufacturing at the individual component level all the way to a full vehicle level; not to mention our capabilities and accomplishments at the highest levels of global motorsports, this now demands a higher level of specialisation and that is what the split will facilitate.”
“Multimatic’s model has always been to break the growing businesses down into smaller, more agile operations, and so it has become time for Engineering,” explained Holt. “After 32 years of continued growth the size and diversity was becoming limiting. High volume component and systems engineering ultimately requires a different approach to the development of an entire low volume vehicle and so the management of those types of projects has now been split. However, as in the past, engineering resources will be shared as it makes no sense to try and duplicate functions like the best predictive methods organisation in the industry; simulation will stay with the engineering group and continue to grow in size and capability.”
