McLaren has confirmed that 'two-thirds' of the 375-strong production run of its flagship P1 supercar has been sold.
“We are ahead of our targets and we still have 500 hot sales prospects on our list,” a senior McLaren manager has confided to Autocar.
The bulk of those sales, which add up to around 250 cars, are likely to have been in Europe, the US and Middle East.
The European sales pitch kicked off at the Geneva Show in March, but more recently the P1 sales effort has moved away from McLaren's homeland to the US and Middle East on the first two legs of a global sales drive.
McLaren will hope that the next leg of the sales journey — into Asia— will find buyers for the remaining 100 or so P1 models, each costing £866,000.
The McLaren P1's rivals include LaFerrari and the Porsche 918.
Autocar has produced digital books on the McLaren P1 hypercar as well as the F1 and 12C supercars.
Download the McLaren F1 digital edition.
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McLaren vs Ferrari
Sorry, but you buy a hypercar as much to impress others as you do yourself. It's the ultimate - and if you can, then why not? But ask 100 people whether they've heard of Ferrari and do the same with McLaren and I can guarantee you won't get the same response. Heritage counts, cachet counts (like it or not), more so than lap times or technological innovation. That's why Ferrari will ALWAYS outsell McLaren - unless they quit F1 and start selling superminis instead. It's not so much a car thing, as a brand thing. Ferrari is THE supercar brand.
MikeSpencer wrote: Sorry,
Mike, remind me how much a Ferrari F50 will cost me to buy and how much a Mclaren F1, from roughly the same era, will cost me now?
Given your comments I assume you will be able to buy 10 Mclaren F1's for the same price as one Ferrari F50.
I could get a Ferrari 288 GTO, Ferrari F40, Ferrari F50 and a Ferrari Enzo and save some money I guess over ONE Mclaren F1.
So much for your "heritage counts" bollox,
See this toilet pan? That's your argument going down it. Wave goodbye and slink off now, there's a good chap.
Re: AndyW35
I agree with eveything you say. Given the funds I'd have a McLaren F1 over any car on the planet but my point was the majority of hypercar owners don't buy their cars to impress other hypercar car owners - they buy them to impress everyone else. The McLaren is as expensive as it is because it's as exclusive as it is: only 100 cars (64 std, 5 LMs, 3 GTs, 28 GTRs) were ever built. However the F-series Ferrari's were much more prolific:
Ferrari 288 GTO - 200
Ferrari F40 - 302
Ferrari F50 = 349
Ferrari Enzo = 373
Total Ferrari F-cars to date = 1224
100 McLaren F1's will always be more exclusive than 1224 F-Series Ferraris. And exclusivity sells: simple economics, supply and demand, nothing more than that.
Factual Figures
Ferrari built 272 GTOs, 1315 F40s, 349 F50s and 400 Enzos (not 399, as an extra Enzo was built and auctioned for charity). This makes a total of 2,336 Special Limited Series cars. McLaren couldn't shift the F1, that was why they built so few of them.
MikeSpencer wrote: Ferrari
Agree with this apart from the fact that correct numbers are:
288 GTO = 272 cars
F40 = 1337 cars
F50 = 349 cars
Enzo = 400 cars
Total Ferrari F-cars to date = 2358
Exclusiviy and rarity factors count: had they made, let's say, only 100 or 200 F40s, they would sell for millions now. Like those 250 California SWBs. A 250 GTO is worth about 30 million nowadays, maybe more. Having said that, the McLaren-BMW F1 is a milestone.
Well the thing is the P1 isnt
Well the thing is the P1 isnt an F1. It never will be. Its a boring by the numbers car. Also the F1 was mclarens first car. Go out and buy a 166 inter for a million and you sir are a master at negotiation. So maybe drop the attitude.
Or, an alternative point of view if you're not a pessimistic sod
That's 250 cars at £866k each, or £217M into the British economy, keeping highly skilled people employed, and adding to tax revenues for the country.
No one can expect McLaren to rival Ferrari in road cars without the long history. I think it's a pretty good achievement, and would the detractors above like to state if they've built such a technology laden car, and amassed a turnover of £217M recently?
Economy haters
Well well well, someone who actually bothers to look at the postive side of a story, instead of being lazy and cynical with a sideswipe at McLaren for not being Ferrari.
I was fortunate enough to be present at Geneva, I've seen both cars, and both are amazing to look at, technologically they're both cutting edge - if you buy one, I guess you have the money to buy the other. Lets not forget that with Ferrari, they trawl their hypercar customers from yesteryear and offer them first dibs. Not a bad way of selling cars, but its hardly seeking new business in emerging markets. What?! I hear you all cry, but of course a Ferrari will sell like hot-cakes, I certainly don't deny it, as a brand the cachet is unrivalled. However looking at it soberly, the British economy for manufacturing is in a terrible state - our forte is high-end luxury goods, so why shouldn't McLaren be pushing the positive side to the story - they've sold at full price it would appear 250 of 375 cars - that is a massive number of ±€1million cars. Once they have finished their charm offensive in the Middle East and Asia I'm sure yet more jobs and livlihoods will be safeguarded.
Or do the livlihoods of those employed for McLaren no longer matter in the petty 'mine is bigger/faster than yours' attitude displayed here by the cynics? Bravo McLaren (and Ferrari) lets celebrate the success!
Ferrari/McLaren
Having read last Autocar paper issue, it's pretty clear that Ferrari is way ahead on commercial terms. They have sold all Laferraris available, so they are thinking about a superspecial limited edition with new body designed by Manzoni; a Maserati version with same chassis, as they brilliantly did with the successful MC12, is on card. Having said that, IMHO LaFerrari looks 100 times better than a P1, it's got a V12, not the pumped-up V8 and the same chassis of the cheaper 12c as the P1. From a financial point of view, the Ferrari is a safer bet too.
RednBlue wrote: Ferrari is
Well...yeah! They've been doing it quite a bit longer, I'd be surprised if they weren't. That McLaren get as close to Ferrari as they do on their 3rd (4th?) road car attempt is a real achievement.
They have now, but they hadn't at the launch when the boss lied and said they had.
RednBlue wrote: Having read
And yet people still buy cars from Zonda, Koenigsegg and many others, most of which the non car lover will never have really heard of, certainly less than they'll have heard of McLaren which they'll often see in the sports pages/news.
The same can be said of heritage and cachet, what heritage helps these two sell cars that McLaren, with all it's F1, Le Man and sports car racing history, doesn't have?
As to always selling more than McLaren, McLaren currently have a 3 car model range, it can hardly be a surprise that Ferrari with it's larger and regularly revolving product line outsells them, but then why would they be trying to compete on sales figures? There is room in the market for multiple manufacturers, why do we obsess over who is selling the most units, perhaps we should look at percentage of manufacturing capacity that's being used.
It's also worth remembering that Ferrari has the weight of Fiat sat behind it and the buying power that goes with that.