Supporting Year of Engineering

In November 2017, the UK government announced that 2018 will be the Year of Engineering, a national campaign to increase awareness and understanding of what engineers do among young people aged 7-16, their parents and their teachers. This is part of a year-long campaign to tackle the engineering skills gap and widen the pool of young people who join the profession.

At CAI, the foundation of our business is good engineering. With our SMITHS brand of instrumentation, we have over a hundred years of engineering history. We have designed and supplied speedometers, tachometers and other gauges for some of the most iconic cars and motorcycles ever made. We also have designed and manufactured gauges for boats and yachts including lifeboats used by the RNLI.

A career in engineering is both exciting and rewarding. At CAI, we have worked on some amazing projects designing and supplying a wide range of instrumentation (e.g. clocks, speedometers, tachometers) for classic cars such as the 'new original' Jaguar XKSS and Noble M12 Supercar. Last year, we had a car park full of Aston Martin cars as members of the Aston Martin Owners Club had a tour of our design and manufacturing facility in Abercrave, near Swansea in South Wales.

Presently, at CAI we have four young future engineers following an apprenticeship programme. Their training includes studying engineering at college and working with our engineering team at CAI. The apprenticeships are in design, machining and tooling, all vital in the creation and manufacture of speedometers and other gauges. The apprenticeship scheme is partly funded by the Welsh Government. We believe that it is important to invest in our future and it forms part of our long-term commitment to Investors in People.

Designing a Speedometer for a Classic Car

Our engineers have the responsibility of designing instrumentation (e.g. speedometers) with perfect functionality whilst also matching the style and look of the car or motorcycle. The SMITHS gauges we presently manufacture for the classic Aston Martin DB5 have to reflect the image and history of one of the most loved classic cars in the world. Our heritage has allowed us to retain all of the original SMITHS drawings, microfilms and assembly information for car instrumentation dating as far back as 1956.

Our gauges also feature in the dashboards of the classic Mini and MG sports cars, where the appearance is slightly different, but equally important.

At CAI we are proud to offer a bespoke gauge design service according to our customer needs, whether the requirement is for an authentic product or a new design. We design, develop and print all of our dial faces, using both older techniques (such as pad and screen printing) and new technologies, which allow us to improve quality, print finer detail at the same time reducing set up times. We can even print one-off speedometer gauge faces for the VW Camper Van.

The next generation of engineers are fundamental to the future of our business.

In recognition of the 'Year of Engineering', we intend to regularly post photographs and information about the importance of good engineering in our business. We take great pride in having a highly skilled UK based design and manufacturing team and would like to inspire future engineers.

For further information on our gauge designs for Classic Cars and Motorcycles, please contact us on:

Via our website

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +44 (0) 1639 732200