Sep 2, 2026 · 38 min · 13 segments
In this episode of The Purposeful Strategist, Belden Menkus speaks with Mark Tapscott, Co-Founder and CEO of Longbow, an electric sports car company whose aim is to engineer cars that are fast…
Belden MenkusHostWhat does that look like? I think, first of all, you've got to understand the history of British automotive.
There are a few companies alive still today that I think many people would class as that sort of classic British story of usually one or a few men and women in a shed at the bottom of the garden coming up with something that doesn't exist, creating one or two of them, and then a business pops out the back of it.
I think that's great because what it's meant is that we've always had cars that have come out of the UK that have been real passion projects and have got some really unique and quirky engineering about them.
I think that's probably what a lot of people have fallen in love with with British sports cars in the past when we think about brands like MG and Lotus.
What does that look like in the future? Well, first of all, I don't think you can do the...
There are still today, not just out of the UK, but of course around the world, a lot of new car companies that come along, usually by wealthy individuals that have made their money somewhere else and then want to have a car named after them or their daughter or something similar.
But they rarely convert into something that most people can buy and into something that is sustainable.
There is a graveyard full of British car company names that we could run through now that probably live some of that story.
So I think for us, the future of British motoring is to focus on what we are good at.
And really chasing the right metric or the right measure of what a good car or car company can be from those regions.
Because I think all too often, What happens today is there's a measure of you're a great car company based on pretty much one metric, which is volume of vehicles.
How many do you sell? As soon as you do that, you introduce, of course, the powerhouse of China and the volume and scale.
and speed at which they can produce vehicles is something that is very, very difficult to compete with, especially in Europe or the United Kingdom with high energy costs and the other challenges we have.
So first of all, the future I think for the UK looks like focusing on what we are known for and have been good at historically, which is usually luxury, it's performance, it's high technology, craftsmanship I think most of these words would be associated with brands like McLaren and Aston Martin and Bentley Range Rovers that we have so comes down apart from the product itself as I've described is the brand and what does that really stand for when you take a look at these brands now that are sweeping across Europe.
Not so much in North America, of course, right now, but their products, incredible technologically, materials.
And the brand often, in my experience at least, working with some of those organizations, has been second to moving the metal.
What does that look like? I think, first of all, you've got to understand the history of British automotive.
There are a few companies alive still today that I think many people would class as that sort of classic British story of usually one or a few men and women in a shed at the bottom of the garden coming up with something that doesn't exist, creating one or two of them, and then a business pops out the back of it.
I think that's great because what it's meant is that we've always had cars that have come out of the UK that have been real passion projects and have got some really unique and quirky engineering about them.
I think that's probably what a lot of people have fallen in love with with British sports cars in the past when we think about brands like MG and Lotus.
What does that look like in the future? Well, first of all, I don't think you can do the...
There are still today, not just out of the UK, but of course around the world, a lot of new car companies that come along, usually by wealthy individuals that have made their money somewhere else and then want to have a car named after them or their daughter or something similar.
But they rarely convert into something that most people can buy and into something that is sustainable.
There is a graveyard full of British car company names that we could run through now that probably live some of that story.
So I think for us, the future of British motoring is to focus on what we are good at.
And really chasing the right metric or the right measure of what a good car or car company can be from those regions.
Because I think all too often, What happens today is there's a measure of you're a great car company based on pretty much one metric, which is volume of vehicles.
How many do you sell? As soon as you do that, you introduce, of course, the powerhouse of China and the volume and scale.
and speed at which they can produce vehicles is something that is very, very difficult to compete with, especially in Europe or the United Kingdom with high energy costs and the other challenges we have.
So first of all, the future I think for the UK looks like focusing on what we are known for and have been good at historically, which is usually luxury, it's performance, it's high technology, craftsmanship I think most of these words would be associated with brands like McLaren and Aston Martin and Bentley Range Rovers that we have so comes down apart from the product itself as I've described is the brand and what does that really stand for when you take a look at these brands now that are sweeping across Europe.
Not so much in North America, of course, right now, but their products, incredible technologically, materials.
And the brand often, in my experience at least, working with some of those organizations, has been second to moving the metal.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
