How McLaren will make quality a supercar selling point
Quality team is embedded at every stage of a car's development
British firm wants its quality to be better than Ferrari or Lamborghini's in five years' time
“Quality must be improved.” That was the message repeated constantly by McLaren CEO Michael Leiters on his arrival in Woking in 2022, and in his first interview with us.
It is far from the most exciting topic in the industry yet it’s about as important as it gets: what use is all that thrilling performance if a warning light comes on every five minutes?
The person tasked with delivering for Leiters is an ex-German navy commanding officer.
Jochen Schnez started as chief quality officer in April, not straight from the navy but from Mercedes-Benz, where he spent 21 years after leaving the forces and most recently oversaw the Bremen plant.
Schnez’s time leading a fast patrol boat taught him plenty about “knowing what consequences your decisions will bring with you”. But at Bremen – where high-volume models like the C-Class roll off the line every 60 seconds and more specialised lower volume AMG cars like the GT and SL in as little as 20 seconds – he also honed an appreciation of what a “quality mindset” can bring.
Quality is a word that can mean different things to different people, yet for Schnez it’s simply “meeting or exceeding customer expectations”. It’s not just fit and finish, but all hardware and software working as it should, and cars delivered in the specifications they were ordered in and in full working order.
Ask Schnez where McLaren currently is on its quality ‘journey’ and his diplomatic answer, delivered with a smile, is “you can always improve”, yet he has set the goal of McLarens being at their very best by the end of next year and to be “top of the segment, better than Ferrari or Lamborghini” in five years.
He is in the process of instilling a ‘quality mindset’ at McLaren and its suppliers - a “marathon, not a sprint” into 2026 that will relentlessly emphasise the need for good quality and include company-wide awards and training. He has also built up a quality team of more than 100 people, many of whom are recent recruits from other top car makers such as Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Schnez’s quality team is embedded throughout the business at every stage of development – not just on the production line but also in design and development teams for both hardware and software.
One key tenet is for parts to be “designed for manufacture” so you don’t create “a world of pain” by handing over a part to the factory that cannot be made at scale in a quality, repeatable way.
This is part of a ‘quality loop’ that stops faults as far upstream as possible and prevents a quality issue from being handed onto the next stage of development or production. “Passing on zero faults is the ultimate goal,” says Schnez. “The aim is always to produce quality, not to check quality.”