Ron Dennis, the man who guided Lewis Hamilton to the Formula One world championship, is lining up his McLaren Group for a tilt at a chunk of the luxury sports car market with a £250m investment in volume production.

McLaren’s automotive division has until now built about 100 sports cars a year at its technology centre in Surrey. Now, even as the downturn cuts into sales of other luxury cars, McLaren is moving to begin production of 1,000 cars a year at the start of 2011 and eventually increasing it to 4,000.