McLaren 650S (iStock.com/VanderWolf-Images)
These are great days to be a billionaire petrol head. From Modena to Ängelholm, companies are creating the most astonishing cars. This upper tier of just-about-legal vehicle is called the hypercar. But it wasn’t invented in the auto heartlands of northern Italy or by some clever clogs in Sweden.
This super class of car was dreamt up in Woking – by McLaren.
While this firm may hail from a rather down-to-earth sounding town, their products are truly out of this world.
The latest McLaren to get the palms of the super-rich sweaty is the 650S Spider. With an ancestry rooted in Formula One, this is a car that makes you feel "like bursting into tears,” according to one Guardian journalist.
The most noticeable thing about it, of course, is its super-light retractable hardtop, which opens in a nifty 17 seconds. But there are plenty of other eye-popping features: the dihedral doors, for instance, or the 3,799cc V8 which propels it – and anyone lucky enough to be sitting in it – from 0-62mph in a mere three seconds.
And then there are those unbearably well-proportioned lines, the sexy headlamps which reflect the curve of the brand's logo, and – so on.
A lot for the billionaire class to enjoy, then. But what really makes the richest of the rich so hot-under-the-collar about a car like this? The 650S Spider ticks all the boxes of a beautifully made hypercar – but what really tips the balance is its exclusivity. No matter which McLaren model we're discussing, it will invariably be extremely rare, usually part of a production run of 500 or less.
You're not going to come across this in the average UK high street – except maybe in Woking on the back of a transporter bound for Tilbury Docks.
Of course, there are limits to how much money McLaren can make with this strategy. Indeed, they posted a modest £20m profit in 2014 – the same as about two dozen P1s. Sure, they could be accused of being luddites; the firm’s 1700 workers still build most of each car by hand, with just a single robot to help out. And you won’t find any Mercedes-Benz wing mirrors or Audi speed dials on one of these either – everything is made especially for the McLaren brand.
But, rather than being luddites, the McLaren team and their old-fangled, perfectionist approach lends the brand a truly artisan quality; a notion hard to refute when you see a 650S – or any other McLaren – in the flesh.
Undeniably, McLaren’s business model is working very well; it remains one of the most legendary and desirable car marques in the world, even if most of us will never get to drive one.
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