My Life & Cars – Matt Becker, vehicle dynamics wizard
Son of Lotus and now vehicle engineering director at JLR, Matt Becker has a car history as impressive as his career
From such an incredibly young age I’ve been immersed in this automotive world, had petrol injected into my veins,’ says Matt Becker. Still, there’s not much choice when your dad is Roger Becker, project engineering director at Lotus, bringing home an endless stream of test and development cars and taking you into work on Saturday mornings.
‘I think the [original] Europa was my first experience with Dad in a car. You were almost laid down – I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t see over the dashboard. I also remember DeLoreans, getting stuck in one because the door wouldn’t work, and my mum had an Elan Plus 2, green. It was an ex-development car, I think, that Dad had bought just before they split up, when I was six or seven.’
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‘After they split, every other weekend Dad would pick me up on Friday or Saturday, and he’d always have a different car, an Elite, Esprit or an Excel. I used to think they were rocketships. I remember him dropping me off at school discos and everyone thought I was the cool kid. And, of course, I can’t do any interview without mentioning the James Bond thing (Roger drove the white Esprit for stunts in The Spy Who Loved Me). He was always sliding cars around roundabouts when it was wet and I thought, “This is amazing, I want to do what you do.”’
Roger Becker had started at Lotus in 1966 on the Europa production line as a leather trimmer but had always been interested in driving and dynamics and was part of Lotus’s first dynamics engineering team, along with John Miles, Alastair McQueen and Dave Minter. He’d go on to be project engineering director, working on both internal and external projects.
‘I remember being driven around in Toyota Supras, the square-ish ones – he did a lot of dynamic tuning on that for Toyota,’ says Matt. ‘The other cool one was the Corolla GT, the legendary AE86. To be honest, I probably started learning how to assess a car from the age of about six or seven. Dad was assessing cars continually. I used to think, “Why on earth is he doing these lane changes?” because I’d find it pretty uncomfortable. One time he explained he was trying to feel the front-to-rear axle phasing of the car. Was it balanced? Does the heave motion of the car work correctly? And is the secondary ride where we think it needs to be? He might as well have been speaking French, but when you’re a kid you don’t realise how much of a sponge your brain is. All that stuff was probably going in.’
After Matt’s parents split, Colin Chapman let Roger use a cottage at Ketteringham Hall, HQ of the Lotus Formula 1 team, before he found a place in nearby Hingham which, handily, had a gravel car park next door. ‘Dad didn’t buy things, he got stuff – I had a pair of water skis that had been made in Hethel. He acquired Clive Chapman’s old kart and I’m sure I must have naffed off all the neighbours because I spent hours drifting it around the car park. I’d have been 10 or 11 years old at that point.’
Almost inevitably, Matt joined Lotus as an apprentice in 1988 and, having passed his test, got his first car – a brand new Vauxhall Astra 1.3 Merit. ‘Lotus was owned by GM and we got huge discounts. Dad put down the deposit and I paid the monthly fee.’ It was more than just the Astra that Matt had access to, though. ‘I’d only just passed my test but I could drive Dad’s company car. So I said, “Can I borrow your car?” and he’s like, “Yeah, no problem.” It was a 1.8 Carlton estate. We used to get free fuel through Lotus so I drove to Hethel to fill up. On the way there was this series of bends and I thought, “I know, I can drift this.” Dad had showed me, I’d drifted karts, I’d seen clutch kicks, what could possibly go wrong? I got it turned in, nailed it, did a big old clutch kick and instantly this thing swapped ends and I went straight into the wall.
‘Dad came and collected me. He was upset and annoyed but was actually quite good about it, saying “we all make mistakes”. He banned me from driving his cars for a while and got Alastair McQueen to give me a bit of training at the Lotus test track in an Excel, to maybe get rid of some of the desire to drive fast on the road but also to help me with car control. Alastair told my dad that I had a natural ability but didn’t tell me until much later, which is right; it probably would have gone to my head.’
Matt kept the Astra for a couple of years before being seduced by the first of a number of seminal driver’s cars. ‘I can remember telling Dad I really wanted a Peugeot 205 GTI and watching the blood drain from his face because they were a bit edgy. I’d saved up a bit of money but he wouldn’t lend me the rest so I got a bank loan for £5700. It was a 1.9 but an ’87 model without power steering because it was too much money. I loved it, it was a mega thing. I think it taught me how to drive; you could only push it so far. Mates had Uno Turbos and R5 Turbos but the 205 GTI 1.9 was the one to have.
‘Then I went through a period of Golf GTIs. My first was an eight-valve Mk2 – I couldn’t afford the 16-valve. It was a bit bigger, a bit more refined. Unfortunately, it kept getting water in the oil. I did engine building as part of my apprenticeship and remember draining all the fluids on Dad’s new brickweave driveway. He was mighty pissed off, he was so precious about it; he had OCD, a bit like I do.
‘A 16-valve Mk3 followed but Volkswagen had lost their way a bit. It was sturdy and reliable but nothing special.’ At work, Matt had joined the Elise development team midway through the Mk1, working with John Miles, so it’s no surprise he craved something a bit more visceral than the Golf. ‘I went back to some French stuff, to a Renault Clio 172. It was a lot more engaging that the Golf, not quite as engaging as the 205 because I think that was the start of the mass of cars going up and up. But it had horrendous electrical reliability.’
That kind of explains his next choice, an Audi S3, but it didn’t hit the spot. ‘I’d spent a load of money on a car that didn’t really excite, so I went back to a Golf. I’d seen these Mk4 Anniversarys with special wheels. Turned out there was nothing special about it so I didn’t keep that for long.’
Matt’s growing reputation saw him invited to compete in the 2003 Autocar ‘Sideways Challenge’, which introduced him to his next car. ‘They were using BMW E46 M3s. Amazing engine, horrible SMG gearbox. I’d never driven one on the road to know how bad the ride was on the 19-inch wheels that I shouldn’t have ordered. My wife hated it. A couple of years later, we had our first child so I needed something sensible-ish. We bought a Mk5 Golf GTI DSG, five-door. Brilliant. We kept it for three years.’
Work was going well. ‘I did Jaguar XKR-S as a customer project and then took a management role to lead chassis development on Evora.’ Good news for the career, not quite so good for the bank balance, at least initially. ‘Principal engineers go all over Europe and get paid overtime. As a manager you work the same hours but don’t get overtime. Sometimes, though, you have to make a sideways move for the sake of your career.’
The company car scheme offered little compensation: Lotus was then owned by Proton. However, a couple of years later, the Becker household finances were in good shape. ‘I thought, this is an opportunity. We’d had a 911 as a competitor car for the Evora and I loved it. A friend knew of a 997 Carrera, non-S, manual. I went to drive it and thought, “I gotta have this thing.” With 911s, the more you demand, the more you get. It was magic, but I had it for less than a year because our daughter arrived. I think I sold it for the same as I bought it; given how values went, I could have kept it for ten years and pretty much had free motoring...
‘My approach for the Evora was to make it as enjoyable as an Elise, as enjoyable as a 911. With any project there are limitations, and the drivetrain inertia with the Toyota V6 and IS 200 diesel gearbox meant we could never get the gearshift we wanted. So you look at the things that you can do. The steering rack was off a Honda Accord but we had the opportunity to change the internals, the torsion bar stiffness and the valve edge to give us the steering we wanted. Brakes were our own and working with AP Racing we eventually got the feel where we wanted it.
‘The 911 was very useful. I learned a lot in terms of driver engagement and enjoyment and also ergonomics – Porsche is outstanding on ergonomics. Evora was never planned to be a 911. On price it sat between a Cayman and a 911 and our total budget was £40 million, a tenth of the budget Porsche would have used for a 911.
‘In 2014 I was kinda close to leaving Lotus. Dad retired in 2011 and I felt like he was handing the baton to me, but I knew what Lotus was doing for the next few years and it wasn’t anything particularly exciting. And the CEO was not the nicest person to work for. I think a company with a bad culture can turn out bad cars because people won’t put the passion and energy into the cars if they’re not being treated respectfully.
‘Andy Palmer tried to get me to go to Nissan in a role similar to that of Mike Cross at JLR. But during the interview he said he’d been approached for the CEO job at Aston Martin. I didn’t go for the Nissan job. Three months later, it’s announced that Palmer is CEO of Aston and within weeks he was on the phone asking if I’d come to Aston. I started in January 2015. It was a massive decision to leave Lotus. I’d grown up with it, been there 26 years, though in reality I’d probably been there 35 years! But it felt like it was the right thing to do.’
He stayed at Aston seven years, overseeing development of numerous models, including DBX, Aston’s first SUV. Initially he drove Ford Mondeos, which were brilliant for the commute from Norfolk. ‘Then I thought, “I can get an Aston as a company car. Why on earth am I not?” I wouldn’t call it a midlife crisis but I was 45 years old. My kids wanted a convertible, so I got a Vanquish Volante. The problem was I just didn’t use it because every weekend, every evening, I’d have a benchmark car or a development car. Aston had a comprehensive benchmark fleet stocked with Porsches, Ferraris and McLarens. People used to say I was a Porsche fanboy because we had a Cayenne for the DBX and I’d use that quite a lot, and then for Vantage we had a 991 Carrera S and then a GTS, which I spent a lot of time in. So I had the Vanquish Volante for a year but only did 3000 miles.’
In 2021, Becker was approached by Mike Flewitt at McLaren. He was receptive because he wasn’t enjoying working under the new management at Aston. ‘I loved the brand and models, still do, but I just didn’t feel like I could function there anymore. I put in my resignation and was immediately put on six months’ gardening leave.’ Two months into that leave came news that Flewitt had resigned…
‘I kept going down to Woking to meet the team and there was so much uncertainty.’ So when he was approached by JLR and learned that Mike Cross was retiring, he grabbed the opportunity. ‘It’s a shame McLaren didn’t work out but I’d always thought that one day I wouldn’t mind doing Mike Cross’s job, or something like it.’ He’s now JLR’s vehicle engineering director, and relishing helping reinvent JLR as an electrified car company. ‘I reckon I’ve got the best team of dynamics engineers in the business.’
His company car is a top-spec Range Rover. ‘I do miss sports cars,’ he confesses. ‘I spend far too much time on AutoTrader and Collecting Cars. I’d really like a 991-gen 911 GTS. I’ll scratch that itch in the next couple of years.’
This story was first featured in evo issue 309.
