McLaren had a plan. It would have three model lines, all sports cars, clearly defined: Sports Series, Super Series and Ultimate Series.
Sales volumes would be modest by the standards of most supercar manufacturers, but would bring a profit, funneled back into model development. There would be no five-door and certainly no SUV. It would be a pure sports car range. Admirable. And that would be enough.
Ten years into McLaren Automotive’s life, that has not been the case.
Today’s model range is defined subtly differently than how it began. There is now the GT series (including only the McLaren GT) and then the Supercars, in which are both the McLaren 720S and, curiously, the next Artura, which I thought was a replacement for the McLaren 570S (Sports Series) .
If you think that’s a blur, there are already some 16 models from the last decade that McLaren consider Legacy cars.
There are some very good driver cars in there, but there has been too little separation between them. They are, to use a phrase from an unnamed rival CEO, “like a butcher selling different lengths of the same sausage.” All twin-turbo V8s, all with the engine in the same location driving the same wheels via a dual-clutch gearbox, and all with an overly similar carbon fiber tub.
That wouldn’t be a problem in itself if their combined sales volumes were so small that McLaren even had to sell their own headquarters.
More about this article: Read More
Source: www.autocar.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-04-27 11:56:29