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We visit Harding Autos at the beginning of a busy season, with customers bringing their beloved classic vehicles out of the garage for summer adventures and a plethora of motorsport events creating a surge of customers needing race-ready performance cars. Mike muses: “They always come out of the garage with the same problems that went in, except they forgot about that in November,” he chuckles. Since being established in 1979, Harding Auto Services has evolved from a traditional independent garage into a highly specialised automotive engineering business supporting both road and motorsport customers. Based in Knaphill, Surrey, the family-run company is now led by mechanical engineer Mike Harding, whose focus on in-house engineering capability has driven significant investment in CNC machining, CAD design and reverse-engineering technology alongside the workshop’s long-established servicing and restoration operation.
Today, Harding Auto Services offers far more than routine repair and maintenance work. Alongside MOTs, ADAS calibration, diagnostics and servicing, the business undertakes bespoke fabrication, engine building, motorsport preparation and precision component manufacture through its HAS CNC division. By combining advanced 3D CAD software, finite element analysis and CNC machining, the company is able to manage projects from initial concept through to manufacture, installation and testing entirely in-house.
A major area of growth for the business has been reverse engineering, with 3D laser scanning technology allowing worn, obsolete or unavailable parts to be recreated and refined for improved durability and performance. Machine shop services now include cylinder head machining, block sleeving, flywheel resurfacing, CNC porting and bespoke component fabrication for specialist automotive applications.
The workshop continues to support modern, classic and performance vehicles with rolling-road tuning, ECU remapping and track preparation services, while recent projects have included track-focused builds and the development of billet aluminium replacement parts designed to address common OEM weaknesses.
“We’ve had the dyno ten years now and that's transformed our game massively. Very few people tune old cars, people get scared of carburetors and they don't want to go anywhere near them. We do a lot of tuning for road, for motorsport and performance, just general performance cars, upgrades. And then we do modern cars as well. Our apprentice Nathan has been replacing and reprogramming an ECU on the BMW M2, that’s going on the dyno this afternoon, we're doing some software development on that. We have cars that are also running on standard-alone engine computers and things like that, which we completely tune from scratch. And then so it's all developed from nothing to a full running vehicle, basically.”
Young Nathan, understandably feels very lucky to be learning such a wide skillset across a vast range of vehicles, but Mike admits: “It's a bit of a nightmare for me, to be honest with you because I train people up to do it and then, of course, they're a very precious commodity. The only two things we don't do is build gearboxes and we don't do bodywork, but we pretty much do everything else. So, in terms of apprenticeships and experience, Nathan probably gets to do five jobs in one, which is great for him but then I've got to try and hang on to these guys because the time and the money and investment, it doesn't just stop, you know, once they finish their college course. That's really the beginning, you know. But he's great. He's the best apprentice we've had by a long stretch.”
“This Morgan has got 400 horsepower through a 3-litre V6 twin-turbo petrol engine in it and a modern automatic gearbox, again all running on separate standalone computers, all controlled and developed in-house. So, basically we get them all communicating, they're all on a CAN network like they are in a modern car, they all share information between, you know, the screen in the steering wheel and all the other various computer control systems on the car. It means that you can essentially now take any old car and put new components in it. But even better than that, if, you know, in 20 years' time, these coil packs weren't available anymore and you had to go to a different technology, all you do is change them over and then programme that and tell it it's looking at a different part, explain what the part is, and it will work and that's the big thing that people don't realise. It will transform the way that we do cars in the future in this field, in this sort of restomod conversion field. It has really largely come out of the States, but it's really growing and gaining a bit of traction now in the UK.”
“I don't know. We have looked very closely at high voltage battery repairs and things like that. It's very niche and there are people out there that are starting to set up businesses to test and repair them, but what makes me nervous about it is the technology changes so often. If you buy in some equipment to repair one specific design, how long is that going to be relevant for and how much return on investment are you going to get? It is tricky. We're investing time and our own sort of intellectual property side of things in this. The ability to take a car and revitalise it with new components is where I'm tending to go at the moment, because actually there's no better environmental way of doing things than to recycle a car that exists.”
Harding Auto Services’ CNC Division combines advanced 3D CAD software, thermal modelling and finite element analysis with CNC machining to provide bespoke component design, manufacture, installation and testing services in-house. Commonly used for vintage Rileys and MGs but also parts for Tesla, Aston Martin DB2 and various VW models, shipping worldwide to owner clubs, motorsport companies and direct to other workshops . HAS CNC also offers a digital upload service for customer CAD files and project enquiries, supporting rapid consultation and development turnaround.
