McLaren’s Future Plans Include A Mystery Model With More Than Two Seats

Earlier this year, CYVN Holdings, an investment group based in Abu Dhabi that owns the McLaren Group, announced that the storied automaker would be merging with an unknown startup called Forseven. That company had been operating in stealth mode and was planning to release several luxury cars when CYVN decided it’d be a wise move to combine the two entities.

Read: McLaren Merges With Unknown Startup To Launch New Models, Maybe An SUV

Over the coming years, this partnership is expected to transform the McLaren brand. Now under the leadership of Nick Collins, it’s going to launch a load of new models, including one that will be announced later this year. Collins has also confirmed that there will definitely be a new McLaren with more than two seats.

Expanding the Playbook

“We know – give or take 10 per cent – everything we’ll do through 2030, and we have a design model of everything,” Collins recently told Car Magazine. “There will be more of what we’ve always done, but even better, and then entry to some adjacent segments. You’ll definitely see something with more than two seats, but that still leaves us in quite a wide territory. And as I said, even in two-seat territory, we could have a lot more diversity there.”

What that means in practice remains unclear. Collins failed to state whether the new model will be a sedan, an SUV, or perhaps something different. Given the immense popularity of SUVs and the fact that key rivals like Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini also sell SUVs, following suit would likely be a prudent decision for McLaren. If such a vehicle were also sold in high volumes, it could help to fund new sports cars and supercars.

The tie-up between McLaren and Forseven also includes Chinese automaker Nio, because CYVN owns a 20 percent stake in the brand. As such, future McLaren models will incorporate “Nio components…much sooner than you think at a component level,” Collins said.

Regardless of what the future holds for McLaren, it has the necessary investment to become an even more significant player on the market.

“This is not a two-to-three-year, private equity type deal,” Collins noted. “Nor is it the other end of the spectrum, a vanity project where they’ll fund losses forever. We want to build a business that can generate free cashflow, that can fund its own future. Only if we do that will we ever create the kind of legacy that we’re talking about. I want people many, many years down the line to be able to come to work at McLaren. We shouldn’t be taking a 10-year horizon. We should be building a company for 50 years down the line.”