McLaren boss confirms SUV study

An SUV case study is officially underway at McLaren, with new company boss Michael Leiters emphasising the importance of high-end SUVs

Speaking to the British publication earlier this month, Leiters – Ferrari’s former chief technical officer – said high-performance SUVs are not only selling in droves, but that they also increase brand awareness and have a flow-on effect on the rest of the range.

“I developed an SUV at Ferrari [Purosangue],” he told Autocar.

“I developed an SUV at Porsche [Cayenne], so I love SUVs. But we won’t do it for me. Yet I think it’s a really important market.

“It still is, and it continues to grow. It’s very attractive as a market segment.”

Evidence of the latter is the runaway success of high-riding luxury wagons like the aforementioned Porsche Cayenne and the smaller Porsche Macan which, together, contributed 171,433 of Porsche’s 301,915 global sales last year.

The Lamborghini Urus has proved equally fruitful for the Raging Bull brand, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the Italian marque’s record 2021 sales tally.

Likewise, Aston Martin’s DBX accounted for more than half of its annual sales, and fellow luxury brands Rolls-Royce and Bentley are also now dependent on SUV profits.

And while Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have long been in on the SUV action, future moves by Ferrari, Lotus and Alpine to enter the SUV space could leave McLaren as an outlier.

Former McLaren chief Mike Flewitt always vehemently said McLaren would not produce an SUV, but clearly that view is not held by Leiters, who has headed up the British sports car brand since July.

“What we have to understand as McLaren is ‘how can we find a product that is in line with our DNA?’,” the CEO said.

“We shouldn’t do a classic SUV.”

Realistically there is only so much you can do with an SUV, which can take the form of a traditional high-riding wagon, a BMW X6-style four-door fastback ‘coupe’ or a low-slung crossover wagon like the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo and upcoming Ferrari Purosangue.

There also various sizes of those body styles, but the premium and high-performance market tends to favour the larger end of the spectrum and, in turn, flagship asking prices.

Autocar suggests a McLaren SUV could cost as much as £350,000 (almost $A600K) in its native UK market and would be a pure-electric proposition with a dual- or tri-motor all-wheel drive powertrain, but wouldn’t be launched until the second half of the decade.

Leiters confirmed he was open to a strategic partnership with another brand to develop such a model, provided it was the right fit.

“You have two sides of a partnership, one is technology and one is financial,” he told Autocar.

“And if you find both in one, definitely that will be the best. But the first thing is to have a technology partner to create synergies.

“We have to maintain our DNA; I’m not interested in any partner which gives me only ‘me too’ technology.”

According to Autocar, McLaren has previously had such talks with Audi and BMW, both of which already have high-performance electric SUVs in production.

So while it’s unlikely we’ll see a high-end electric super-crossover brandishing an upside-down tick on its bonnet any time soon, McLaren now appears to have the desire and know-how to produce its first SUV in the near future.

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