It sold off more cars from the corporate collection for some quick cash…
While Ferrari enjoys a market cap of over $41 billion, British supercar brand McLaren is so hard up for cash it’s raided the corporate car collection for some quick funds. The company has actually been considering selling off its car collection since 2020. Last year it sold the storied McLaren Technology Centre to a property company based in the US.
See McLaren’s CEO’s personal car collection here.
This time around, Automotive News says the company has sold some of its car collection to Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat Holding. The report doesn’t specify which vehicles were sold. At least before, the collection contained dozens of Formula One cars which had been piloted by the likes of Ayrton Senna and Bruce McLaren. Other notable vehicles include the McLaren F1 XP5, a prototype car which set the world land speed record for a production car, and the legendary McLaren Can-Am racers, like the McLaren M8A from the 1968 season.
According to the report, the vehicles were sold to pay for “certain technical upgrades” necessary for the Artura plug-in hybrid. Deliveries of the gasoline-electric supercar have been delayed because of the issues. That wasn’t great for Q3 financials.
In return for selling some of its highly collectible car collection, majority stakeholder Mumtalakat agreed to inject £100 million into the company. We’re curious just how many vehicles that transaction included, but McLaren won’t say.
Even with that extra money flowing in, it sounds like McLaren is still in serious financial trouble. Automotive News says the company is talking to shareholders about recapitalization. Future partnerships with other groups is also on the table, although we can only speculate which ones might be in play. A synergy between the likes of McLaren and Koenigsegg or GMA could be pretty fantastic.
Despite those fantasies, it’s not great to her McLaren is still loping along financially. It makes some of the most interesting modern supercars out there, so to lose that creative force in the industry would be awful.
Source: Automotive News
Images via McLaren
