McLAREN WILL BUILD 1000 CARS IN 2011, RISING TO 4000 PER YEAR BY 2015

Make no mistake, McLaren wants to become a very serious player in the world of ultimate sports cars over the next five years. That became crystal clear after chairman Ron Dennis outlined his company’s ambitious plans at its Woking HQ earlier this month. Having relinquished control of McLaren’s F1 division to Martin Whitmarsh in January, Dennis is now devoting his full attention to developing a brand new range of McLaren sports cars, starting with a mid-engined Ferrari F430/Lamborghini Gallardo rival known internally as P11 and due to be launched in late 2010.

The plan is for the P11 to be followed by further models, seeing production ramp up from around 1000 P11s in 2011 to around 4000 cars per year by 2015. In order to achieve this, McLaren needs to raise around a further $ 380million of investment capital so that it can build a new production facility in the UK.

It’s a highly ambitious plan for the company, which has spent the last six years building just over 2000 Mercedes SLR McLarens, but Dennis is convinced the demand will be there come 2011 as it is widely predicted that the world will be out of the current credit crunch by then, allowing McLaren to benefit from any pent-up demand for supercars that it and other manufacturers are hoping for.

Frank Stephenson – best known for designing the first-generation ‘New Mini’ and the new Fiat 500, and also for overseeing recent Ferrari and Maserati designs – was poached from Fiat to help develop the full range of McLaren road cars, but otherwise very few details are known about the cars themselves. However, evo understands that the plan is to create three separate McLaren model lines by 2015. The P11 will sit in the middle of the range, with sales predicted to be around 1000-1500 units a year. Next to be launched will be an entry-level model designed to rival Audi’s R8 and Porsche’s 911, as this is where McLaren is hoping the real sales volume will come from. Then, if all goes well with these, a third model will join the line-up, and this one is tipped to be the ultimate McLaren, along the lines of the legendary F1.

The P11 will face some stiff competition when it arrives – an all-new replacement for the Ferrari F430 is due later this year and it’s expected that the Lamborghini Gallardo will have been updated before the McLaren’s launch in 2011. There’s also the new 564bhp, 6.3-litre V8-engined Mercedes AMG SLS supercar (see Planet evo, issue 027), which is due for launch in 2010. McLaren was keen to point out that its P11 does not share any components with this Mercedes. A McLaren official also confirmed to evo that, contrary to rumours, the engine for the P11 is not sourced from Mercedes and will be an all-new unit, unique to McLaren.

The P11 is expected to set new standards of fuel efficiency for its class and, according to Ron Dennis, will be built in lower volumes than its obvious Italian rivals while being priced higher. Reading between the lines, expect the P11 to cost around $ 240,000 were it on sale today. The company is currently working on creating a new, worldwide McLaren dealer network for its cars (a Middle East operation is being set up as you read this), because there will be no tie-up with Mercedes dealerships on this new venture either.

What state the sports car market will be in come 2011 remains to be seen, but it’s clear that McLaren is very serious about taking the fight to the established players. We’ll find out how real the threat is when we get to drive the first McLaren P11 in the autumn of 2010.