McLaren has revealed a number of people have bought TWO Senna supercars – one to drive hard and one to stash away for the future.
The British firm’s latest hypercar, capable of reaching 211mph and hitting 60mph in 2.6 seconds, made its public debut at the Geneva Motor Show alongside details of a track-focused GTR ‘concept’.
The £750,000 limited-run supercar – of which all 500 have already been sold – is powered by McLaren’s 789bhp 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8. This is the most powerful engine McLaren has ever put in a road car and also produces 800Nm of torque.
At the show, we chatted to Jolyon Nash, executive director of global sales and marketing for McLaren Automotive, who told us about the Senna, its buyers and how many of them already look at the brand’s cars as investments.
Our customers
‘It’s hard to make generalisations, but most of our customers are self-made individuals. A vast majority will be male, entrepreneurs and aged in their 40s to 50s. They are obviously successful, demanding people. But I think one of the things that differentiates us from other cars in the market we operate in is that our research indicates that people generally buy the car for how it drives. It’s the intricacies of the car that is important to buyers.’
The Senna name
‘There was a lot of debate in the company when we were thinking about what we should name this car. We decided with the Ultimate Series cars we should focus on having a name that you can easily attach emotion to. That is our strategy now. With Ultimate Series cars, we would like to have more of a nameplate than letters and numbers. With this car, since it is so hardcore and track-focused, we thought it would be the perfect car to pay homage to Ayrton Senna. He was probably the most uncompromising race driver, and legendary. It kind of fitted.’
I’ll take two
‘We’ve had a couple of customers who wanted to buy two. Sometimes it’s because they have two residences, and they want here and one there. Others it’s because they want to take one car and really work it hard, while they want to keep the other pristine and hardly used. We have a very strong demand for this car, and had sold out all 500 before we even announced it. We have to satisfy as many customers as we can.’
Choosing buyers
‘We did not specify things like how many of our cars customers must own before they get a Senna. We’re not quite formulaic. We like to be accessible. On the one hand, it’s a balancing act between rewarding your most loyal customers, who have been with us from the beginning. Those who, when the MP4-12C came out, were willing to invest in a totally new supercar brand, and have been with us ever since. We want to reward those customers, but also, since we are very much a growing brand, we also want to get new people in. We don’t want to be a case where to buy a special McLaren it’s dead man’s shoes.’
Numbers game
‘The car costs £750,000, but I think we’ve specced more than 60 cars now, and I’d hazard a guess that they probably cost about £840,000 on average. But there are obviously some extremes. It’s very easy to put on a visual carbon-fibre body like the one on display in Geneva and that’s about a £160,000 option. The total price for the car on display here is over £1m.’
Want it all
‘Some customers want to make the car special for them. And for them that may well mean they want things like visual carbon fibre. Others want to be more understated. They’ll just be unique about the colour and a few other bits and pieces. With this car, there are very few standard options. It’s the glass in the bottom doors, the glass in the roof and some stuff with the hi-fi system. Other than that, the sky’s the limit. Some people are much more conservative.’
Investment opportunity
‘The vast majority of customers, when they see a car like this, they just want to have it, it’s all desire. But also they see it as an investment. I think this car’s going to be another iconic McLaren. I really do think this will be a bit like the P1. A P1 is roughly £1.5m now. It has appreciated. I think the market, at the moment, has hit a bit of a plateau. I think things like a LaFerrari have come down a bit, so the market is flat, but they’re still worth considerably more than anyone would have paid for them new.’
The GTR
‘We haven’t started taking deposits, but we’re revealing a concept car. It isn’t finished, but it’s very close to what the finished article is going to be. Even before we started the process, we had a good number of expressions of interest – not formal, but “if you’re doing a GTR I’m interested” conversations. From the beginning we thought we’d do a GTR version, so we’re pretty comfortable that having shown the concept we will sell out very quickly – but we haven’t even agreed a price yet.