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The boss of UK supercar specialist McLaren says its long-rumoured fast four-door won’t be in showrooms until 2028 at the earliest.
British brand McLaren says it plans to expand beyond its current range of supercars – including an SUV and electric vehicles – but it won’t happen before 2028.
In an interview with UK magazine Autocar at last weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, McLaren CEO Michael Leiters said the car-maker is currently focusing on putting “the company on the right road to profitability.”
When asked about the progress on a long-rumoured SUV model, Mr Leiters told Autocar it was prioritising a complete reorganisation and recapitalisation of the company first.
“If we are on the right road for profitability, we will think about extension across all segments. We call it ‘shared performance’. Shared performance could be everything which has more than two doors and/or more than two seats,” Mr Leiters told Autocar.
“This is something we will think about later. We didn’t make a decision on that. It’s definitely a business opportunity for us. But I don’t see that in the near future. If you consider what I said – recapitalisation and then going to profitability plus the development time [of the car] – this won’t be before 2028.”
The British car-maker launched its first plug-in hybrid supercar, the McLaren Artura, earlier this year.
Because of the development costs of its latest vehicle, the company is expecting “2023 to be a difficult year” for revenue and profitability.
Furthermore, the Artura is still ramping up production, which has lengthened customer delivery timelines.
Mr Leiters told Autocar the company will focus on three technologies for future vehicles: solely petrol-powered models, hybrids, and electric cars.
McLaren’s current road-going supercars, the Artura and 750S, are either petrol or hybrid.
However, Mr Leiter expects hybrids to make up 90 per cent of McLaren sales in five years.
Mr Leiters said McLaren said any future electric car needs to be as light as possible, to maintain the vehicle’s agility. It would need to be “comparable to a 750S weight-wise (1389kg)”, the executive said.
“We are working on concepts and have really exciting ideas around that, and if in time it is there it has to outperform what we can do with [petrol engines].”
As part of the Drive content team, Tom covers automotive news, car reviews, advice, and holds a special interest in long-form feature stories.
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