- Behind the scenes at Munro
- Manufacturing the world's toughest EVs
- First Scottish car builder in 50 years
- We tour the firm's Glasgow facility
The Scots have invented some notable creations over the years, including the telephone, the ATM, tyres, and the refrigerator. We’ve also attempted to build cars, although this never quite went to plan...
The last car to come out of Scotland was the Argyll GT. A shed-built turbocharged 2+2 GT car shaped like a cheese wedge, powered by a 3.5-litre Rover V8 and targeted at Porsche and Lotus buyers. With its 160mph top speed, the GT had rival brawn, but its awkward styling and lack of dealer network meant its demise was inevitable. Soon enough, Argyll’s shed doors closed for good.
Scotland gave up building cars until Munro arrived with its Mark 1 in 2022, also known as Scotland’s answer to the Land Rover Defender.
The slab-sided Munro, built to take on the roughest environments the world has to offer, was teased with a 61.2kWh battery, a 220kW electric motor, and a £49,995 price tag. Range was expected to be around 141 miles, and it could carry a 1,000kg payload. However, if buyers slide an extra £10,000 under Munro’s door, they could get an 82.4kWh version with an 186-mile range.
Times have moved forward, and so has the Mark 1, now known as the Series-M. The revised Series-M model looks sharper, meaner and even more rugged than before. There are also two powertrain options: M170 and M280, the latter being the more powerful 300hp model, and both get an 85kWh battery pack with a 200-mile range (WLTP).
Starting a car brand isn’t an easy task in general, never mind building one north of the border, so we couldn’t resist when we were invited to take a peek at Munro’s production facility just outside Glasgow.
The 7,500 square-foot building, split into three areas, sits in a modest industrial estate. It’s packed with interesting CNC (computerised numerical control) machines, allowing Munro to make most of its components for its Series-M off-roaders onsite.
“All the body panels and steel structure are processed in-house, bar a few other bits and pieces. If we need to order bulk, we’ll outsource this to a contractor,” says Russell Peterson, CEO and Munro co-founder.
The facility is powered by a small team. There are no fancy welding robots or production lines like you would see at a mainstream manufacturer’s space, but this adds even more uniqueness to each Munro vehicle that leaves the building.
“Our vehicles use CV joints because you get a lot of vibration in universal joints; CV joints give you a slightly wider range of motion and less vibration. You can’t mask vibration with an electric vehicle as there’s no engine,” Peterson adds.
With most of the vehicle parts designed and constructed in-house, Munro will occasionally purchase parts off the shelf; however, availability isn’t always promised, and such parts might not be good enough for the final product. Therefore, parts are often reverse-engineered, redesigned, and reconstructed via the onsite milling process to ensure top-notch rigidity.
Most of Munro’s constructions, however, are adapters, which allow two parts to be connected. For example, a steering column that needs to be connected to an electric power steering system.
Moving into the bodywork and fabrication building, the elephant in the room was a large bodyless chassis, known as a ‘buck’, sat in the corner.
“This is just for fitting and testing. There are three main parts to the vehicle: the chassis, front end, and body, and to ensure everything fits together, we put it on the buck. It allows us to check tolerances and rectify any issues before it goes onto an actual vehicle.”
After a chassis is constructed at the facility, it’s transported to Durham for e-coating, a process that creates a durable, corrosion-resistant finish by submerging parts in a bath of paint and using an electrical current to apply the coating. The chassis alone weighs 265kg.
At the edge of the workshop, a worker fettled a chassis into place by using various weights and a blow torch.
“After you weld together a chassis assembly that’s 4.5m long, it’s never perfect. No matter what you do, there’s always a distortion. So, the last step in building a chassis is to maintain the rails between the chassis while fettling it into the correct shape. It’s essentially destressing all the major weld areas to bring the shape back to where it was.”
Moving into the final build area, Munro’s boffins carefully connected the final pieces of a Signal Yellow Series-M, while a development vehicle sat at the back; a prototype car that’s been to the Arctic Circle, so the team could learn how to hone production vehicles to perform at their best in the harshest conditions.
Because the Series-M is targeted mainly at quarry, military and mountain rescue industries, Munro will happily add switch gear for strobe lights and other electronics. All the wiring is in place, meaning outfitting doesn’t take long.
The Munro facility is a reminder of how teamwork can make a dream become reality and how constant testing is vital for success. Every day in the facility is a step in a great direction. Seeing how such a behemoth vehicle is made excites us for what Munro will offer next.
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