LIGHT BLACK DESIGN

The automotive industry has always been in the enviable position of being able to push forward technological boundaries, enabling the end products to realise their maximum efficiency. It is critical that every stage is fully optimised, from the setup of the office right through to the production and assembly of the finished parts.

Company founder Dan Primrose,  worked for 13 years with the design offices of McLaren Automotive, Red Bull F1 team, Caparo Vehicle Technologies and most recently Gordon Murray Design. Within all of these offices, he was a key member of the teams responsible for the design and production of lightweight, cost-effective parts for a range of vehicles with production numbers from one-off prototype parts to 100,000 cars per year.

All of these engineering groups were kept deliberately small, as it was commonly felt that keeping the numbers down would prevent the flow of the design from suffering. This is the same principle employed at the majority of marine-based design offices, where it is critical that every member of the team is involved and has an understanding of all the key activities and is able to contribute to every aspect within the project. This set-up was rare within the automotive world and enabled the various design offices we have been fortunate enough to be part of, to excel in the tasks they set themselves.

Before starting at McLaren Automotive, in 1999, Dan worked at Pendennis Shipyard, as part of a team building high-performance composite yachts. This was a job that started after gaining a BEng (Hons) in Yacht Design at Southampton. It was this role that allowed Dan to move to the automotive world where McLaren were in the early stages of a project to design and build the first-ever carbon fibre, production road car, the Mercedes McLaren SLR. Until then composite cars had always been manufactured in extremely low volumes with extremely high costs, but with the knowledge gained from the marine industry, Dan was able to help move the automotive world in a new direction and help make lightweight cars viable.

Whilst working within some of the most prestigious automotive design offices, Light Black Design have been in the fortunate position of having direct access to the key people in some of the largest, world-wide suppliers. These have included business partners for CAD and FEA software to potential suppliers of raw materials, running into 1000's of tonnes per year.

So now, after 15 years of working the Automotive Sector, LightBlack Design is in a position to offer the latest technological advances that have until now have only been available to the high volume and niche markets in the automotive world, back to the marine sectors and help move the industry forward.