McLaren will double its turnover, invest £1 billion (around Rs 8,900 crore) on R&D and launch 15 new models — one is understood to be the new F1 replacement — over the next six years.
Revealed at Geneva motor show earlier this year, the strategy is dubbed Track22 because it stretches to 2022. The 15 cars, both series and short-run cars, will replace the entire existing model range on a five-year lifecycle.
All the cars will continue to fall under McLaren’s three-pronged model hierarchy — Sports, Super and Ultimate Series — and are to continue to be exclusively mid-engined sportscars. The new F1 will be an Ultimate Series model.
In the shorter term, the new models will include a spider version of the 570S, and the 650S replacement, codenamed P14, is due next year. McLaren also plans to follow the success of the 675LT by making ‘LT’ a track-focused sub-brand. The plan also encompasses a fully electric hypercar as an Ultimate Series model.
Sales and marketing boss Jolyon Nash has told our sister publication Autocar UK, “You can expect one or two special-series cars every year among those introductions (limited-edition models like the 650S Can-Am) but no more than that. Cars like this will be important for us because there’s a lot of demand from customers for cars that feel unique and special. But we must be careful not to launch too many.”
By 2022, at least half of McLaren’s models will feature hybrid technology, following in the footsteps of the petrol-electric P1 hypercar. However, Nash said the firm’s new-generation hybrid powertrains aren’t intended for its next major newcomer, the P14. “Our current V8 will continue in parallel with the new family of engines,” he said.
Nash suggested that we won’t see a new V6 turbo petrol-electric powertrain in showrooms until the renewal of the current 540C, 570S and 570GT models near the turn of the decade. “We should be able to match the performance of the current 570S with a six-cylinder hybrid car by the end of the decade – as well as deliver some big gains on emissions and economy,” he said. Before that, an extra-hardcore LT model for the Sport Series is very much in the product plan, “assuming interest in the model family remains good”.