McLaren wants to take the same path as Ferrari: from the track to the road
By Andrew, 21 Nov, 2011. 0 Comments
2011 McLaren MP4-12C
McLaren vehicles will soon be found on roads as the U.K. motor-racing team has opened a 50 million-pound ($80 million) factory that will mass-produce a 200mph street-legal model. McLaren is second only to Ferrari when it comes to Formula One wins. With a price tag of 168,500 pounds ($266,000), this model is expected to achieve sales of 4,000 units annually. There have only been a handful of teams in motor sport that were able to use its wins on the track to be successful at a manufacturing business. The tremendous success of Ferrari is unique among its rivals in Formula One, the richest race-car series in the world.
It has an annual revenue of $1.1 billion and has a television audience that averages 50 million for every grand prix. Mark Jenkins, the co-author of "Performance at the Limit: Business Lessons from Formula One Motor Racing" and a professor of business strategy at Britain's Cranfield University, said that McLaren will find it difficult since there are many “well-established brands” in the sports-car segment.
He also stated that motor sport technology is “very, very high end” but to go into road-car production, it has to be “far more low-cost." According to Tony Jardine, a manager at McLaren before Executive Chairman Ron Dennis took the helm in 1981 and who also worked for Lotus and Brabham, the new MP4-12C model, which sells at 35 dealerships globally (of which nine are in the U.S.) is a winner. He said that it has had a “massive amount of work” to make sure that the car is “really amazing.”
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