McLaren to wait before launching next Ultimate Series model

After a period in which McLaren introduced and expanded its Ultimate Series, the British exotic's rarest and most expensive vehicles, the automaker is waiting until the middle of the decade to launch the next model, CEO Mike Flewitt said.

"We've come to the conclusion that actually we didn't need to launch another Ultimate Series car after Elva," Flewitt told Automotive News last month. "The plan actually is we don't do another Ultimate car until we do what we call the next-generation P1. We communicated with our customers that that's the case. The Elva will be the last Ultimate car until the next-generation P1, which will be out near 2025 by the time that car comes to market."

Production of the Elva, a $1.82 million roadster, began in November, and deliveries will continue through the middle of 2021, Flewitt said. Initially, McLaren was going to build 399 units, but the production run was lowered to 149.

"We kind of launched it right in the middle of the pandemic, and we lost a lot of production capacity," he said.

The Elva follows the $2.3 million Speedtail hybrid hypercar, which launched this year. It has a production run of 106 units. Before the Speedtail, McLaren introduced the Senna, a track-focused hypercar that launched in 2018 with a run of 500 units.

The P1 gasoline-electric hypercar, credited as the first McLaren Ultimate Series model, launched in 2013 with a production run of 375 units.

Flewitt said McLaren's plan for the Ultimate Series was in place before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"That was already our plan because we thought the market was getting a little bit overpopulated," Flewitt said. "We've done a number of cars quite close together with Senna, Speedtail and Elva. We wanted to create a little bit of space in the market anyway. The pandemic has just reinforced that."