A McLaren with more than two seats – potentially the British performance car brand’s first SUV – could be in showrooms by 2030 according to its CEO Nick Collins.
Speaking to British publication Car, Mr Collins – who became the chief of McLaren’s auto business in April after working for Ford and Aston Martin – said the brand will develop a more diverse portfolio of models as it looks to recover from losing almost £1 billion ($A2.04bn) in 2023.
“We know – give or take 10 per cent – everything we’ll do through 2030, and we have a design model of everything,” the McLaren boss told Car.
“There will be more of what we’ve always done, but even better, and then entry to some adjacent segments.
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“You’ll definitely see something with more than two seats, but that still leaves us in quite a wide territory,” Mr Collins said.
That may include the first McLaren SUV, something its more profitable rivals – including Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lamborghini – already have in the form of relatively high-volume models alongside their traditional sports cars.
In fact, Lamborghini posted a record global sales result in 2024 thanks largely to the Urus, and McLaren is keen to replicate that kind of success, potentially with the help of an SUV like the Urus.
McLaren has offered only two-seat sports cars since the current company’s return with the McLaren 12C in 2011, following the launch of the legendary BMW-powered McLaren F1 in 1992.
McLaren Automotive was bought by Abu Dhabi-based startup CYVN earlier this year and has a 20 per cent ownership stake in Chinese brand Nio, which could help bring a McLaren SUV to showrooms.
Mr Collins said his fresh eyes on McLaren revealed overstocked dealers, too few models and a lack of component sharing across its model lineup, which would have reduced manufacturing costs and improved manufacturing efficiency.
“They [current McLaren models] are quite similar in proportion and concept, but there’s relatively poor commonality between them, so you don’t get efficiency of scale,” he told Car.
“Yet we don’t have the diversity of portfolio for the consumer. And some of the cars I think could have evolved more from a design perspective.”
In Australia, McLaren sold 47 cars so far this year to August, down from 55 in the same period last year.
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