Motor Industry Research Association

MIRA Ltd (formerly the Motor Industry Research Association)
Formation	1946
Legal status	Not for profit company
Purpose/focus	Providing world class engineering services to global automotive and transport industries
Location	Watling Street, Higham on the Hill, Nuneaton, UK
Region served	Worldwide
Website	MIRA

MIRA Ltd, formerly known as the Motor Industry Research Association, is a limited company based near Nuneaton in Hinckley and Bosworth, Leicestershire (near the Warwickshire boundary) in the United Kingdom, which provides product engineering, research, testing, information and certification services to the automotive sector.

History

It 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 (also near Fenny Drayton), Warwickshire, where around five hundred staff work, with another establishment in Basildon in Essex. 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 in 1946. The IAE and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders 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 had earlier 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 area, apart from Vauxhall which had its factory in Luton and Ford which by now was located at Dagenham to the east of London.^[1] The Motor Industry Research institution under its director Dr Albert Fogg (who would later turn up as the Engineering Chief at British Leyland) therefore looked for a location that was reasonably accessible from all these locations, and the site near Nuneaton fulfilled that criterion.^[1] The facilities became available to MIRA member companies in October 1948, though at this stage the test tracks consisted only of disused runways.^[1] Facilities were nevertheless developed under Dr Fogg and Professor Robert MacMillan who took over the directorship from Fogg in 1964.^[1]

Secondary safety

Marking the increasing concern with secondary safety at the time was the opening by the Minister of Technology Tony Benn, in April 1968, of MIRA's in-door rig for crash testing cars in head-on impacts.^[2] Such tests, at 30 mph (48 km/h), had recently become mandatory for cars sold in the US.^[2] The MIRA crash rig featured the UK's largest industrial linear motor.^[2] It replaced a complicated out of doors system that had involved the "victim" car's final seconds being controlled by means of radar dependent remote device from a following vehicle.^[2]

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. It bought the Creative Automotive Design consultancy in March 2003.

Former airfield

The proving ground which forms the largest area of MIRA is built on 760 acres (310 ha) of the former RAF Lindley airfield, named like the nearby Lindley Hall Farm^[3] after the former Lindley Hall.^[4] This farm has the notoriety of being the centre of England,^[5] if calculated by the centre of mass method, similar to a centroid. Meriden also claims the same honour. The Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway used to pass along the south-east perimeter of 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 MIRA.

Functions

MIRA is a provider of product engineering, research, testing, information and certification to the worldwide automotive industry. It was developed to provide research for UK companies but, since the UK car manufacturing industry has steadily decreased (and companies such as Ford have own their proving ground at Dunton Technical Centre in Essex), it provides research to many overseas clients including those in the USA. It also does much work for the defence industry. The Midlands is still home to much of the UK car industry, with Jaguar Land Rover having a large research centre just south of Coventry at Whitley.

See also

• Transport Research Laboratory
• Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre near Thatcham
• Automotive Research Association of India - similar organisation in India - ARAI
• International Automotive Research Centre at the University of Warwick
• Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy
• Japan Automobile Research Institute - similar organisation in Japan(ja:日本自動車研究所)
• Millbrook Proving Ground
• Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} "What MIRA stands for". Motor: pages 75–78. 10 May 1969. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "News: New MIRA test facility". Motor: page 73. 6 April 1968. 
3. ^ Lindley Hall Farm photo
4. ^ Lindley Hall at the website of Weddington Castle. 2008. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
5. ^ A tale of two centres, BBC News, 22 October, 2002 Retrieved 2011-10-05.

External links

• MIRA Ltd website
• 60 years of MIRA (PDF)

Coordinates: 52°33′12″N 1°27′51″W / 52.55333°N 1.46417°W / 52.55333; -1.46417