McLaren Group said its 200-mile- per-hour MP4 supercar will be pitched to owners of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other luxury marques seeking to add an even faster model to their fleet.
McLaren aims to capture about 4 percent of the luxury two- seater car market, equal to about 4,000 sales a year, with the 600 horsepower MP4-12C that begins production next year.
“The typical customer will have a number of cars,” Antony Sheriff, managing director of the McLaren Automotive unit, said yesterday in an interview. “We expect they’ll have a Ferrari, a Bentley, a Porsche, an Aston Martin or a Lamborghini — even a Rolls Royce — and will say, ‘You know what, I’d really also like one of those in my garage.’”
McLaren, owner of the most successful Formula One team after Ferrari, is returning to the luxury road-car market even as sales struggle after the global slump. The MP4 will sell for 150,000 pounds to 175,000 pounds ($230,000 to $267,000) and be part of the same segment as the Ferrari F430 and the Lamborghini Gallardo, according to Woking, England-based McLaren.
The price is less than McLaren’s F1, the world’s costliest car in the 1990s and the fastest until the Bugatti Veyron debuted in 2005. Production halted in 1998 on the 240-mph (386- kilometer-per-hour) F1, which sold for 540,000 pounds.
“This is not a short-term venture where we decided a year ago ‘now is the right time, let’s rush it to market,’” Sheriff said at McLaren’s headquarters. “We fully expect to be selling this car over many peaks and through many recessions.”
Exclusivity
Potential customers will have to wait about a year to get their hands on the MP4, with production capped at 1,000 in the first 12 months to establish the model’s exclusivity, Sheriff said at a briefing attended by reigning Formula One World Champion Jenson Button and his predecessor, Lewis Hamilton.
The new model should be profitable within four or five years, helping Chairman Ron Dennis’s efforts to boost commercial revenue in order to ensure the survival of the racing team.
McLaren also plans to sell a 48 percent stake in the automotive unit to raise funds and has hired Credit Suisse and HSBC Holdings in the Middle East to seek investors, Dennis said at the briefing.
Daimler AG, whose Mercedes-Benz unit owns 40 percent of McLaren Group, won’t be purchasing stock and McLaren is gradually buying back the existing holding, the company said
