McLaren admits: “Actually, all our cars are just bad”

McLaren’s new CEO doesn’t mince his words. Michael Leiters simply admits that his brand has delivered bad cars in recent years. “Not mature”, he calls it with much understatement.

McLaren is not doing well. The British sports car manufacturer has not only suffered from the Corona crisis, but is now also feeling the consequences of the global shortage of chips and its own laxity. General Manager Michael Leiters is very open in an interview with the British magazine Evo.

The McLaren Artura is not good enough

The new McLaren Artura, which is set to save the company, was supposed to be launched a year ago but was postponed to work on various issues, primarily with the software. The Artura isn’t good enough, says Leiters. “There can be no compromises. If you try to close it, you will lose quality. Our entire company needs to understand the importance of quality.”

Because McLaren does not have the best reputation in this area. Leiters has been in office since July 1 and previously worked at Ferrari and Porsche. The first decision he made as McLaren’s new chief executive was to postpone the Artura. “I’ve heard from my team that in the past we’ve accepted products that weren’t mature. And we just delivered them to the customers.”

Leiters: “The Artura is the first model where we didn’t do that. We saw that the car was not mature, so we stopped delivery. We were already experiencing assembly line delays and reduced production to zero to address the Artura’s quality issues.”

The focus should be on quality

According to Leiters, McLaren has risked its financial position by giving away inferior cars to customers. “We want to convey an important message to our dealers and customers: that we understand that our focus must be on quality in the future. We no longer say, “This car is fast and exciting, so forgive us for the quality issues”. This is not possible!”

McLaren can no longer behave like a start-up, says Leiters. “You can make mistakes when you’re young. But we’re not that young anymore. We need to evolve into a mature organization.” One with a lean product portfolio where the hierarchy between models is clear.

Done with the same power source every time

We need to put an end to McLarens that look the same and have the same powertrain, says Leiters. It refers to McLaren’s well-known biturbo V8, which has been used in all models since the introduction of the MP4-12C. The first sports car with a completely new power source is the Artura with its V6 with hybrid support.