
Today we headed to the world-renowned Cars & Coffee event, this time in London. Cars & Coffee were last in Croatia attracting some 10,000 spectators and hundreds of supercar and hypercars.
This ‘invite-only’ event was so popular that the event hosts had to handpick the cars they wanted, which sadly meant many of our members were turned down.
The first meeting point was Topaz Detailing in London NW10 for breakfast and tour of their valeting, wrapping and ‘TopazSkin’ facility.
Breakfast and refreshments were served to pre registered attendees and we were free to roam around the facility talking to the Topaz team.


It was time to depart Topaz, London and head Woking bound to the McLaren Technology Centre.

Arriving at the McLaren Technology Centre







Once we were parked up, we were able to explore and appreciate this spectacularly beautiful venue, view the current McLaren line up and mingle with some of the McLaren team.


Our Lunch with a View!



Meeting & Chatting with the McLaren Design Heads

Had a really interesting time chatting to these guys who lead the design process at McLaren Cars.
They were explaining their role to design the cars, all the while liaising with the ‘aero team’. They explained how they still create mock ups of the cars out of clay, yet still use digital wind simulators tests before using the clay mock just to confirm their test have been accurate. It was also interesting that they have learnt to have thick skin for when their designs are rejected at the proposal stage and worse, if the public slate their design that actually comes to market. Fortunately, they are good at their job and the latter does not happen very often.
And then finally discussing the differences between the beautiful P1 vs the more ‘function-over-form’ Senna.
Guided Tour of the McLaren Road Car & F1 Car Facilities

No pictures allowed for this part of the day. Thoroughly interesting tour with our guide explaining and showing us the whole manufacturing process of the road cars through to the intricate manufacture of small pieces of carbon fibre for their F1 cars.

After the no-pictures-allowed section, we moved to the concourse for a curated tour of the historic F1 racing cars.




Two Walls of Trophies








Gallery










































A fantastic day with friends comes to a close. We now look to next weekend for a Saturday and Sunday back to back weekend!