With a four-car portfolio, a winning Formula 1 program and fresh ownership, McLaren Automotive is looking to lean into its successes to sell more cars.
“We are clearly positioned as a performance luxury car brand, and we are probably most authentic as a branch with a racing heritage,” McLaren Automotive’s Chief Commercial Officer Henrik Wilhelmsmeyer told Newsweek from the grounds of the company’s Carmel, California brand house during Monterey Car Week.
“There are not many brands out there that come from the racetrack. We see many more brands coming from other angles and moving into racing,” he continued.
Though the car company is young (founded in 1985 as McLaren Cars, 2010 as McLaren Automotive), McLaren’s racing heritage is strong. “I think the way how we look at things is probably slightly different than the more establish[ed] brands. It always goes back to where we are coming from, and this is racing. You clearly see a performance DNA in the brand and the product. And with our founding father, Bruce McLaren, I think that ethos that he brought into this company [is what] makes that brand so unique and loved by our clients today,” Wilhelmsmeyer said.
Bruce McLaren started his race team in 1963. The racing operations unit has competed in Formula 1, IndyCar, Formula E, Extreme E and F1 Sim Racing, winning heralded races including the Indianapolis 500, 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Monaco Grand Prix.
And this year the Papaya Orange team is winning nearly every Formula 1 race. Its driver Oscar Piastri sits atop the driver standings with 12 podiums and six wins (284 points), while its other driver, Lando Norris, is only slightly behind with 12 podiums and five wins (275 points). The next-closest competitor, four-time Formula 1 World Championship winner Max Verstappen, is in a distant third with just two wins and five podiums (187 points).
Piastri and Norris aren’t just winning races, they’ve won legions of fans. Norris has nearly 10 million Instagram followers and 26.4 million likes on TikTok. Piastri has about half that.
McLaren Automotive has 11 million Instagram followers and 7.6 million likes on TikTok, numbers dwarfed by its racing division’s 16 million followers and 214 million likes.
“I think our Formula 1 team does currently a fantastic job for the brand. If you look back a few years, back before the Papaya era, how things have changed. You look at the Formula One races, and you see an ocean of Papaya, the fans supporting it, and it has helped to uplift the awareness for McLaren’s brand, and the awareness that they are not only race cars, but there’s an automotive business associated to it, and we see that that works incredibly well,” Wilhelmsmeyer said.
“We are very accessible as a brand, and we want to be approachable. And I think it’s a bit of the attitude and mindset that we have. We don’t want to be seen as an arrogant luxury brand. We are a luxury brand, but I would hope our behavior and attitude, also towards fans and customers, is a different one, a very approachable one, and very engaging,” he continued.
Wilhelmsmeyer sees that approachability as being key to McLaren Automotive’s future success. He said: “Not the fact that we are a winning team, but the behavior that is demonstrated in the team. Look at Zak’s [Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing] team. Look at the two drivers. They have a fair competition. There’s no order saying this is the one, number one driver, and this is the number two driver. And I think it’s this, this attitude and spirit that customers love, the fans love. And, it’s a team spirit. [McLaren is] not an ego-driven brand or company dominated by one individual or a superhero. It’s always this team spirit… There’s this positivity that comes with the brand, and there is less of an arrogance towards things.”
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