Senna

Make
McLaren
Segment
Coupe

Porsche was the first premium car company to build a luxury SUV, a move that was forced upon the German carmaker to get itself out of a financial quagmire that could easily have ended with it being taken over by Mercedes. The Cayenne was a huge success, and financially put Porsche into a position that's allowed the German automaker to keep building faster and faster sports cars. Since then, other brands have followed with great success - including long-time holdouts like Rolls Royce and Lamborghini. McLaren though has just made it abundantly clear, for the thousandth time, that the British supercar maker is not in the slightest bit interested in building an SUV.

Talking to Car Sales, McLaren's Sports Series, director of McLaren's Sports Series, Darren Goddard, said the company is watching how competitors are doing with sales of larger vehicles but that: "There is nothing cool about an SUV," and there's no compelling reason for McLaren to get involved in the market. "They are all just chasing volume. It's not pure," he says.

Other companies are looking for the growth and extra cash flow, but apparently, McLaren neither has the desire or need for either and plans to cap production at around 6,000 vehicles per year.

Even if the British company wanted to, it faces the problem of building a whole new platform for the project and Goddard points out that a lot of the SUVs they would compete with actually ride on a single platform. He's right, as the Porsche Cayenne, Bentley Bentayga, and Lamborghini Urus all ride on Volkswagen Group platforms.

While Ferrari, another brand that preaches exclusivity, works on its SUV, McLaren is sticking to its guns and seeing results. McLaren's sales rose 43.9 percent in 2018 with a total of 4,806 vehicles sold. The company is also picking its trends carefully and patiently working on its all-electric hypercar.