HORIBA MIRA Ltd. (formerly the Motor Industry Research Association) is an
automotive engineering and development consultancy company headquartered near
Nuneaton
Nuneaton ( ) is a market town in the borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth in northern Warwickshire, England, close to the county border with Leicestershire and West Midlands County.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : Nuneaton's ...
in
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...
,
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
. It provides product engineering, research, testing, information and certification services to the automotive sector. Its headquarters are in the MIRA Technology Park Enterprise Zone. On 14 July 2015 MIRA announced that it was being bought by the Japanese-owned testing equipment group
Horiba
is a Japanese manufacturer of precision instruments for measurement and analysis. They make instruments that measure and analyze automobile exhaust gas (80% share of the world market), and environmental, medical and scientific applications.
Ho ...
.
History
Origins
MIRA was formed in 1946 and was mostly government-funded. It is based just off the
A5 near the junction with the
A444 in the parish of
Higham on the Hill
Higham on the Hill is a village and civil parish in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of Leicestershire, England.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : The population at the 2011 census was 840.
The village's name means 'home ...
(also near
Fenny Drayton
Fenny Drayton (once Drayton-in-the-Clay) is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Witherley, in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of Leicestershire, England. OS Explorer Map 232: Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000): It lies nea ...
),
Leicestershire
Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire t ...
, where over six hundred staff work, with another establishment in
Basildon
Basildon ( ) is the largest town in the borough of Basildon, within the county of Essex, England. It has a population of 107,123. In 1931 the parish had a population of 1159.
It lies east of Central London, south of the city of Chelmsford and ...
in
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
. The company dates back to the foundation of the
Cycle Engineers' Institute (CEI) in 1898, which became the Incorporated Institution of Automobile Engineers (IAE) in 1906. The IAE became the Automotive Branch of the
IMechE
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) is an independent professional association and learned society headquartered in London, United Kingdom, that represents mechanical engineers and the engineering profession. With over 120,000 member ...
in 1946. The IAE and the
Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is the trade association for the United Kingdom motor industry. Its role is to "promote the interests of the UK automotive industry at home and abroad."
History
SMMT was founded by Frede ...
were largely responsible for creating MIRA.
Pooling of expertise
After World War Two, the UK car industry was finding it difficult to export to countries where it formerly had little trouble finding markets for its wide range of cars. It was decided by the government to pool the research resources of UK car manufacturers into one site to reduce costs and possibly find new technological advances sooner that could be incorporated into all ranges of UK vehicle makes. The principal auto-makers were located in the
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
area, apart from
Vauxhall
Vauxhall ( ) is a district in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. Vauxhall was part of Surrey until 1889 when the County of London was created. Named after a medieval manor, "Fox Hall", it became well known for ...
which had its factory in Luton and
Ford
Ford commonly refers to:
* Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford
* Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river
Ford may also refer to:
Ford Motor Company
* Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
* Ford F ...
which by now was located at
Dagenham
Dagenham () is a town in East London, England, within the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Dagenham is centred east of Charing Cross.
It was historically a rural parish in the Becontree Hundred of Essex, stretching from Hainault Forest ...
to the east of London.
[ The Motor Industry Research institution under its director Dr Albert Fogg (who would later become Engineering Chief at ]British Leyland
British Leyland was an automotive engineering and manufacturing conglomerate formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 as British Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd (BLMC), following the merger of Leyland Motors and British Motor Holdings. It was partl ...
) therefore looked for a location that was reasonably accessible from all these locations, and the site near Nuneaton fulfilled that criterion. The facilities became available to MIRA member companies in October 1948, though at this stage the test tracks consisted only of disused runways.[ They were finally opened on 28 April 1949 by Dr Fogg who used explosives to cut the ceremonial tape. Facilities were nevertheless developed under Dr Fogg and Professor Robert Macmillan who took over the directorship from Fogg in 1964.][ Such examples include the half mile ]Belgian Pavé
A sett, also known as a block or Belgian block, is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used in paving roads and walkways. Formerly in widespread use, particularly on steeper streets because setts provided horses' hooves with better grip than ...
road used in vehicle tests, completed in 1950.
Secondary safety
Marking the increasing concern with secondary safety
Secondary may refer to: Science and nature
* Secondary emission, of particles
** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products
* The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...
at the time was the opening by the Minister of Technology
The Ministry of Technology was a department of the government of the United Kingdom, sometimes abbreviated as "MinTech". The Ministry of Technology was established by the incoming government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 as part of Wilson's am ...
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. ...
, in April 1968, of MIRA's indoor rig for crash-testing cars in head-on impacts. Such tests, at , had recently become mandatory for cars sold in the US.[ The MIRA crash rig featured the UK's largest industrial ]linear induction motor
A linear induction motor (LIM) is an alternating current (AC), asynchronous linear motor that works by the same general principles as other induction motors but is typically designed to directly produce motion in a straight line. Characteristic ...
.[ It was based on a design by Professor ]Eric Laithwaite
Eric Roberts Laithwaite (14 June 1921 – 27 November 1997) was a British electrical engineer, known as the "Father of Maglev" for his development of the linear induction motor and maglev rail system.
Biography
Eric Roberts Laithwaite wa ...
of Imperial College. It replaced a complicated outdoor system that had involved the "victim" car's final seconds being controlled by means of a radar-operated remote device from a following vehicle.[
]
Commercial organisation
Since 1975, the funding arrangements for belonging to the organisation went from a membership subscription (or levy – mostly irrespective of the quantity of work that took place for individual manufacturers) for car companies to a fee-based system. Currently, the site has around £110 million of test equipment. On 4 July 2001, the organisation changed its name to MIRA Ltd. At this point, it also became liable for corporation tax
A corporate tax, also called corporation tax or company tax, is a direct tax imposed on the income or capital of corporations or analogous legal entities. Many countries impose such taxes at the national level, and a similar tax may be imposed at ...
. It bought the Creative Automotive Design consultancy in March 2003. The company's turnover has increased 4.9% to £45.7m in 2013, producing a £6m surplus which was all reinvested back into itself. On 14 July 2015 MIRA announced that it was being bought by the Japanese-owned testing equipment group HORIBA and changed its name to HORIBA MIRA Ltd.
Technology park
HORIBA MIRA is headquartered within the MIRA Technology Park, a park for automotive research and development. In 2011 the UK government announced that the 850 acre park would become an enterprise zone. Companies who have moved into the park include Haldex
Haldex AB (originally Halda Fickurfabrik AB, then Svenska AB Bromsregulatorer, SAB), also known as Haldex Group, is a Swedish public company operating in the commercial vehicle industry. It is listed on the OMX Stockholm Stock Exchange (Mid Cap), a ...
and Aston Martin
Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC is an English manufacturer of luxury sports cars and grand tourers. Its predecessor was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. Steered from 1947 by David Brown, it became associated with ...
. In February 2015 the government announced that the enterprise zone would be expanded.
Former airfield
The proving ground
A proving ground (US) is an installation or reservation in which technology such as weapons, military tactics and automobile prototypes are experimented with or tested. Proving grounds can be operated by government bodies or civilian industries. ...
which forms the largest area of HORIBA MIRA is built on of the former RAF Lindley
Royal Air Force Lindley or more simply RAF Lindley is a former Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first ...
airfield, named after the nearby Lindley Hall Farm
Lindley Hall Farm is a farm in Leicestershire, England, in close proximity to Fenny Drayton and Higham on the Hill. The farm is owned by Stephen Farmer. It has been best known as the geographical centre of England since the Ordnance Survey's inv ...
after the former Lindley Hall. This farm claims to be the centre of England,A tale of two centres
BBC News, 22 October 2002 Retrieved 2011-10-05. if calculated by the centre of mass method, similar to a centroid
In mathematics and physics, the centroid, also known as geometric center or center of figure, of a plane figure or solid figure is the arithmetic mean position of all the points in the surface of the figure. The same definition extends to any ob ...
. Meriden also makes a similar claim. The Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway
The Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway was a pre-grouping railway company in the English Midlands, built to serve the Leicestershire coalfield. Both the Midland Railway and the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) wished to build a line on simi ...
used to pass along the south-east perimeter of HORIBA MIRA, and is now the Weddington Country Walk. The line was open to freight until 1971, and had a station at Higham on the Hill on the perimeter of HORIBA MIRA.
Operations
HORIBA MIRA is a provider of product engineering, research
Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...
, testing, development and certification to the worldwide transport industry. Its work includes crash testing, aerodynamic design and vehicle ergonomics. It was developed to provide research for UK companies but now provides engineering consultancy to clients worldwide.
References
External links
HORIBA MIRA Ltd website
{{authority control
Automobile associations in the United Kingdom
Automotive companies of the United Kingdom
Buildings and structures in Leicestershire
Engineering consulting firms
Engineering research institutes
Organisations based in Leicestershire
Organizations established in 1946
Research institutes in Leicestershire
Road test tracks
1946 establishments in the United Kingdom