Don't Expect a McLaren SUV Anytime Soon… Or Ever

Ronnie Schreiber
by Ronnie Schreiber

Aston Martin DBX concept

In our post about McLaren having no interest in producing a sports car for the masses, I mentioned I didn’t ask Wayne Bruce, McLaren’s communications director, if the company was considering producing an SUV like many of the other expensive marques. Well, Mr. Bruce read the post and contacted me, saying that he wished I had indeed asked him that question because the answer goes to the heart of what the McLaren brand means to the company and to its customers. Other car companies might be well served to emulate the clarity with which McLaren understands their own brand.

Lamborghini Urus

Mr. Bruce’s title is Global Communications Director and he communicates so well that I’ll reproduce his rather charming email (I like the touch of describing the quintessentially advanced McLaren Technology Centre in Woking as “humble”) in its entirety:

Thank you for contacting me. And do call me Manbat…

Was trying to get back to you about the story you wrote following our chat at NY in which you said you didn’t ask me if we were considering an SUV … like Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Maserati, Lotus, erm … anyone I’ve forgotten?

Well, I wish you had. Because I would have said categorically that we are not. We don’t need to. And we wouldn’t want to.

We don’t need to because we already have a profitable and therefore sustainable business. We showed for the first time together at NY our three product families: Sports Series, Super Series and Ultimate Series. These together set the blueprint for McLaren’s future, a future as we discussed hand crafting sports cars and only sports cars out of our humble facility in Woking, England.

We wouldn’t want to because our passion is making sports cars. It’s what we know. What we do well, I hope you’d agree. And as importantly, it’s what our customers know and love us for.

That question cleared up, I’ll pass on your details to my US based colleague JP to see if he can put you in a 650S.

Very best

Wayne

Note: That last little bit about getting me in a 650S is about the possible loan of a review car, not a purchase. Like they say, champagne tastes and a beer budget.

[Photo credit: “Urusside” by 72Dino – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons]

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Ronnie Schreiber
Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

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  • Boxerman Boxerman on May 19, 2015

    Mclaren has a few things going for it. Ferrari and their dealers are asshats to deal with, you actualy have toi have self loathign to work with thewn and hand over $$ and the cars(despite their paper specs) have become trinkets for fashionistas. Lambos are audis in drag, dynamicaly not so great and heavy, cool for the trophy wife crowd. So Mclaren are greta to deal with, happy to seell cars without BS and had the halo of the F1. It would have been good if Mclaren had focussed on the superlative driving experience offered by the F1, instead of offerign a really fast swoopy GT. The newer oferings may show great paper specs, and even be fast on track, but like many a modern are meh to drive in almost any other context. The steering is well Ok, hardley 997 gt3 quality which is a modern benchmark. The suspesion other than in track mode feels diconected and floaty, regardless of its "perfomance" metric. The motor, yeah it sounds like an aircooled 911 at idle which is cool, but the sound is really a noisy blare at revs, it does have turbo lag esp on hot day, its not particularily smooth, the power inconsistent as turbos tend to be when hot. In short the car does not feel like a lithe livign thing, and no one in this price range cares about c02 emissions. The CF tub,minimalism of the interior, the way the seats are monuted close to the centreline, these are all gret features and make a ferrari feel like an antique. There is lots of clever thinkign at Mclaren, but they mised the design and passion part. The car needs to feel alive, the steering benchmark a Gt3, the motor its got power but thats it. The 570s looks great, maybe the conventional suspension will be an improvement in feel. Hopefully the steering is there. Since its a turbo there is enough low down tq to offer us a stick. Maclrens should be drivers cars not paper spec cars. The problem with the newer Mclarens imo is they were built by engineers against a spec. Sportscars need passion DNA, the F1 had it, murry was driver. Take on 458 motor, Gt3 steering and a 570s body, then you really have something seminal. Yes an elise is the seminal car to drive, but many wont go for its small size rc car build and bucket of bolts sounding engine. Mclaren shoudl be the upscale version of all that is good at lotus. On the positive Mclaren si elaring fast, they have a great boidy designer now and their own design langauge. Hopefully the add excitement to the machines.

  • Pch101 Pch101 on May 20, 2015

    McLaren makes about four cars per day. Toyota builds more cars in two hours than McLaren will build all year. McLaren doesn't need to diversify because it hardly builds anything at all. It cannot be compared to higher volume automakers, i.e. just about all of the other ones.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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