‘A 2-ton supercar is not a supercar’

For all the specialness of its cars, McLaren Automotive was founded around a simple idea. One that Ron Dennis helpfully explained when I interviewed him at the then fresh McLaren Technical Center in 2009, long before a car had even been delivered.

“Effectively there will be a different product every year,” said Dennis, “it will either be a derivative – a coupe or a targa or a GT – or it will be a different model. But broadly speaking, there will be a new car of one kind or another every year for 12 years.”

Run that clock when the MP4-12C launched in 2011 and those numbers are actually an understatement; By my estimate, in 2023 there were eighteen different models or variants according to Ron’s definition. And although he left McLaren in 2017, his vision of a model range built around a shared core architecture was absolutely vindicated. The current 750S sits on the same Monocell or Monocage platform as the 12C, and uses evolved versions of the same twin-turbo V8 and dual-clutch transmission.

But while McLaren has delivered many exceptional products during its short lifespan – the P1, Senna, 720S and three ‘LT’ variants were the brightest highlights – it has also encountered some major problems. Even before COVID hit, the company was starting to struggle, due to the lack of demand for the stripped-down, seven-figure Elva, with planned production cut from 399 to 249 just before the pandemic hit. Later the number was further reduced to just 149. Then there was the GT, which no one outside of McLaren’s marketing department ever took seriously as a true grand tourer.

But it was COVID that triggered the existential crisis as sales dried up and McLaren lost a quarter of its workforce. The company was forced to raise money to stay in business by mortgaging both its space-aged headquarters and even its collection of historic cars. The launch of the Artura, the first car to sit on McLaren’s new platform, was repeatedly postponed and there were two highly publicized ‘thermal incidents’ in the media. CEO Mike Flewitt left abruptly in 2021 and McLaren’s financial situation remained precarious. According to the most recent published accounts, McLaren lost £873 million last year. That equates to over £400,000 for each of the 2,137 cars sold.

But behind the scenes, McLaren is also transforming itself. It had a new boss in July 2022 when Michael Leiters took over as CEO. The German director was previously Ferrari’s head of technology and previously worked for Porsche. He has already implemented some much-needed organizational changes and overseen the simplification of McLaren’s ownership structure. Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat, took full control earlier this year and now owns 100 percent. Leiters has also been busy planning McLaren’s future, and those are the things I really wanted to talk about when I interviewed him last month at MTC in Woking, his office across the hall where I’ve been for fifteen years. spoke with Ron Dennis ago.

Firstly, and most importantly, McLaren will continue to do what it does best. “We want to develop the core business for the future,” says Leiters, “we have had a difficult year, and difficult years in the past, and we want to become a sustainable company. This is based on the segment we are in today, so supercars and ultimate cars. That’s what our primary focus is.”

Which leads to the obvious question of what comes next, one Leiters answers before I ask it. “To unlock our full potential as a company, we believe there is a second phase: scaling and expanding our offering beyond the segment we are in now. We called it ‘shared performance’ because you can share the performance with more people than you can have in a McLaren today.”

Which, in the same coy way other supercar makers are, is a way of not quite saying SUV, in fact; something that will compete with cars like the Ferrari Purosangue, Lamborghini Urus and Aston Martin DBX 707. Leiter’s reluctance here is understandable given that Flewitt repeatedly promised that McLaren would not produce an SUV.

While this new shared performance model – or models – is an ambition rather than a signed part of the plan (the mock-up below is from DeepAI’s image generator), a lot of thought has already gone into its creation. Given McLaren’s lack of an SUV platform, it’s no surprise that Leiters acknowledges this would be done in partnership with another manufacturer. “I think the smart way is to partner with technology and create synergies, but not lose what is at the heart of McLaren and the DNA of our brand.”

Then things get more complicated. While much of the ultra-luxury SUV segment will go all-electric – something Leiters admits is possible – he would prefer it to be a plug-in hybrid.

“We are open to these scenarios and if we make a PHEV we want to know if we can use our own powertrain,” he says. “If we were to integrate our powertrain into an existing platform, that would be the ideal world.”

This sentence is delivered casually enough to get the cogs of my brain turning as I try to catch up. What Leiters is suggesting is a McLaren that sits on another manufacturer’s core architecture and is likely built in the partner’s factory, but powered by the Artura’s PHEV V6 or, more likely in this part of the market, the more powerful V8 plug-in that McLaren is developing for the 750S replacement.

Leiters doesn’t want to give any hints about possible partners, but there is an obvious one. McLaren has previously held discussions with BMW about a technical partnership, and the larger company already has its own high-performance PHEV SUV in the form of the XM. Would it be possible to build a credible McLaren product on the same basis?

Well, it certainly wouldn’t be difficult for McLaren’s new design director, Tobias Sühlmann, to create something more beautiful. But Leiters also suggests that McLaren may want to make deeper changes to differentiate its product from the wider market. “For me the most important characteristic of a McLaren is lightweight. Whatever it takes to have it, we will invest in the technology,” he says, “we have world-class competence that we can bring to a partnership, even if we are talking about structural elements of a platform.”

Don’t worry, Leiters has also been thinking a lot about the future of the more traditional McLarens. He confirms that the 750S will be the last model to use the company’s old Monocell or Monocage architecture, with everything switching to the much more flexible second-generation Sheffield-built MCLA platform that sits beneath the Artura. The V8 PHEV powertrain will certainly replace the 750S replacement, but will also likely star in the son of the P1 hypercar we expect to see first.

Does this mean four-wheel drive via an electrically driven front axle? Ferrari and Lamborghini have switched their higher-output PHEVs to e-AWD, but Leiters would not confirm that McLaren will follow: “That’s a detail I don’t want to share yet.” The very possibility that it won’t use such a system raises the secondary question of how much power McLaren thinks is appropriate for a single pair of drive wheels in a road car. Could the company really go beyond the 789 hp of the track-focused Senna, or even the 903 hp of the hybridized P1?

“Why not?” says Leiters. “But it must be controllable. When we talk about the importance of emotions for the brand, a negative emotion becomes fear. I think our cars are very easy to drive – and it shouldn’t be a problem for a non-experienced driver to push our cars to the limit. I understand traction is an issue, but there is so much potential in aerodynamics, downforce, tire development and powertrain control. I believe there is still a lot of room.”

Given that Leiters also confirms that the ultimate P1 replacement will have to deliver performance at the top of its segment – ​​suggesting a four-figure power output that could rival the likes of the Ferrari SF90 XX and Lamborghini Revuelto, we may expect something truly spectacular.

But McLaren is also looking to the further future, with the development of an EV supercar. “We have started and are working intensively on a purely electric powertrain,” says Leiters, “this should determine how a [electric] supercar should be… I am convinced that the first EV supercar will be a McLaren. We understand what it means to make supercars, and if we can’t do it, no one else will.”

This may sound tough, considering there are already mega-fast electric cars with two seats, such as the Rimac Nevera and Pininfarina Battista. But Leiters makes it clear that his definition is based on weight, not just performance.

“For me, a supercar that weighs two tons is not a supercar,” he says. “It’s easy to have a better ability to improve performance. This is longitudinal performance, if you will: acceleration. But the better question is: what is the lateral performance? You cannot deliver that if the weight is too high.”

To achieve that goal, McLaren is focusing on reducing the mass of an EV supercar to minimize damage compared to an internal combustion engine version, while still ensuring the car can carry enough battery for a decent range and good performance. How close could this McLaren EV come to the weight of a PHEV like the 1,500kg Artura? “Very close, very close,” he says, “that’s the target.”

The question remains unknown. Rimac recently confirmed that it has failed to sell the full range of 150 Neveras, suggesting that potential buyers in this part of the market are still not keen on the prospect of pure electric vehicles. Leiters admits this is a challenge, but one McLaren must be ready for.

“I think as a company we have to be prepared. Rule makers will decide,” he says, “what happens if one day the market changes and the majority of customers, not a minority, demand it? It depends on the properties: if you can create a really compelling, emotional product, it can work.”

One of the changes Leiters has already implemented is a deliberate reduction in production to help protect residual values, something the company has often struggled with.

“I won’t talk so much about the volumes, but about the revenues,” he says. “If you look at the volumes you have achieved in the past, it is clear that we have sometimes oversupplied the market. We won’t do that again, ever again. We deliver on demand… you can’t release special editions every six months. You have to give them time to create a market, a demand and excitement, to ensure they get the right attention and respect. That is crucial.”

Much still needs to be done to turn McLaren’s fortunes around and make it viable again. But in Michael Leiters, the company has a boss with both the ambition and, crucially, a plan to do so.