McLaren takes on Ferrari and Porsche

There is a more affordable McLaren on the way. Equally, those for whom a 330km/h top speed is insufficient, there’s a Mega-Mac coming, too. It’s all part of British supercar maker McLaren’s plan to go to war with Ferrari as a “full range supercar company”.

“We’re not about making one-offs and then disappearing,” spokesman Mark Harrison told CarsGuide during a tour of McLaren’s L18 million new manufacturing facility in Woking near London. “We are committed to offering customers a full range of performance cars by mid-decade.”

McLaren is best known as the successful Formula One team behind world champions Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button. McLaren’s first road car was the F1 released in 1992. 

This high-performance supercar used innovative design and engineering and a 461kW BMW V12 to smash all existing supercar records. To this day, the F1 is still among the fastest sports cars.

McLaren also partnered with Mercedes-Benz to produce the SLR, a gullwing supercar that Harrison says “taught us a lot about achieving high levels of quality”.

Last year McLaren began producing the MP4-12C performance coupe in its new facility. With annual demand for the 12C expected to peak around 1,000 units, there’s plenty of room for more models in the factory’s 4,000 annual capacity.

Derivatives of the 12C, such as a convertible with a folding hard-top and a track-focused GT3, are planned. McLaren will also revive the F1 icon with a hypercar, due in 2014, but just handfuls of this $1million-plus machine will be built each year.

That still leaves close to 3,000 capacity, but don’t expect sedans or SUVs. Harrison says McLaren will stick to what it knows best — performance coupes at the higher end of the performance and price envelope. “Something to compete with the Porsche 911 Turbo, for example.”

There’s no doubt the Ferrari California will also be in this model’s sights.

So, three completely new cars in five years sounds like a lot of work for Britain’s only mainstream supercar maker. But with McLaren’s pedigree in motor sport and experience building world-class supercars, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche and Europe’s other fast car makers have a reason to fear the British again.