The start of 2016 saw some major changes at Darley, North Yorkshire-based, MNR Sports Cars.

Marc Nordon with an MNR VortX

After 15-years of trading run by the father and son combo of Chris and Marc Nordon, things changed this year after Chris decided to retire. Marc saw this as an opportunity to re-energise the business and appointed co-directors Mary Owen and David Watson to help him drive the company to the next level.

“After 15-years of working with my father, who was the front of house and face of MNR, this was my opportunity to shake things up and move the business on to the next level, when my father said he wanted to retire. It was a daunting prospect as he had always run the business on a day to day basis since its inception, while I concentrated on the workshop and development. It was a challenge but one I accepted with open arms, though,” he said.

That’s exactly what Marc has done with the new look MNR Sports Cars: “I decided I needed to get the balance of the business right and appointed two co-directors who between them have a wealth of experience in growing small businesses through marketing and process-led initiatives, which is what MNR needed in order to grow the business and customer base, while also looking after our existing valued customer base.” Marc continued.

Marc decided that while a marketing refresh was underway including a new-look website and online shop (with card payment facility), he was going to concentrate on modernising and diversifying production with some hefty investment in new machinery including a four-axis vertical machining centre (VMC) to make lots of fancy new components in-house.

These will be made from billet alloy and include sumps, oil cooler take-off plates, brake discs and velocity stacks for all bike-engined cars. Also investment has been made in a CNC Bar Feed lathe that will enable all of MNR’s components to be produced for their own range of cars thus reducing order times as they don’t have to rely on third party suppliers.

Marc with one of his new machines

MNR is currently working on a number of kit and turnkey bike-engined and roadgoing VortXs powered by Mazda, Subaru, V8, Honda i-VTEC and Ford EcoBoost engines, as well as a number of specialist and one-off builds for customers.

For further information contact the workshop on 01423 780 1986 or visit www.mnrltd.co.uk ENDS.