It's
easy for us punters. If we want a new set of pedals, a shiny vent or a smooth
new gearknob, we just ring up Leven Technology and order one of their products.
It's in the post that day, we bolt it on at the weekend and there endeth the
story.
The amount of work that's gone into the design of that product isn't
immediately evident. That's not to say that the quality of the product is
inferior - far from it - more that the complexity of the design isn't
appreciated until you stop and wonder. How they hell did they make that?
With a background in designing medical instrumentation, Leven's Managing
Director, Simon Eager, has all the right skills to produce finely honed
accessories for fussy customers like us.
Designing the new gear knobs for example wasn't as easy as first appears.
Different shaped knobs, suit different types of cars. The raised position of the
gear lever in most TVRs required experimentation with several different designs
before a suitable and ergonomic shape was agreed upon. Only at that stage, after
much hand crafting and reshaping was the design ready to be manufactured. Next
problem - how?
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Precision is key
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The best people to make Leven's designs are Simon's old colleagues from his
instrumentation days - E. Reed & Sons. They have a machine shop full of the
most incredible equipment for measuring and specifying designs, computers for digitising those designs and then the monstrous machines that etch, cut and shape metal with great
precision. Some machines specialise in taking simple hunks of metal and turning
them petrol caps and other complex shapes. Others are used to laser etch logos
into metal. With each bit of kit costing tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds
it's quite an investment.
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These things ain't cheap
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E. Reed and Sons make some gruesome kit for wrenching hip bones out and
various other acts of kindness which we'll skip over for now, but amongst that
production line is Leven's kit. Leven work so closely with the company now that
they've even moved into offices directly upstairs from the shop floor. This will
allow them to develop new products more quickly as the new designs can be tried
out within hours if necessary.
You might also wonder how a company that appears to make petrol caps for TVRs
actually survives. Their product range is deceptive though. Their catalogue
lists around forty products and many of those come in several variations giving
a total product range into the hundreds. And that's just the retail side.
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Some jobs are best finished by hand
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On the OEM side of the business Leven do a lot of work for manufacturers,
coming up with elegant little switches, kick plates, name badges and more.
Morgan is one of the customers they can tell you about but they also do a lot of
work in removing parts bin components from luxury cars and replacing them with
something more special. They've established quite a reputation in their field.
Having visited their offices, it's obvious that it's the design process that
fires them up. They're constantly looking for new ideas and new ways to apply
their skills. That product range is only ever going to get bigger (V6 oil caps,
Chimaera vents, flame traps for V8s, stainless dashes are all in the pipeline).
They've always got their ear to the ground though, so if you think there's a
gaping hole in their product range, shout out now.
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