Thank Frankel It's Friday: What should McLaren do next?

But it’s very easy to look back and see how well it has done. It is always trickier to look forward and see what any company should do next, and it is especially true with McLaren. However good are its cars, McLaren is a very young brand in street car terms – yes there was the F1 over 20 years ago and even three M6GTs before then, but as a full time constructor building its own cars, it’s just five years old. Popular thinking among coveted brands these days is just to build an SUV because that’s where the money is: Bentley, Maserati and Porsche have already done it, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Aston Martin are well under way. But not only is the youngest of these brands is over 10 times older than McLaren Automotive, McLaren’s brand values are cutting edge technology, driver involvement and light weight construction. It is as hard to see it as an SUV brand as it is to see Ferrari as an SUV brand.

So perhaps McLaren should try something a little less extreme. Ferrari has been building four seat coupes for most of its history so perhaps McLaren should too. But to do it properly would require all new architecture because currently the engine is where the rear seats should be and while the BMW i8 shows that mid-engine 2+2s can be made to work, that has a tiny 1.5-litre, three cylinder engine and a long wheelbase, neither of which seem suited to the McLaren way of doing things.

For now I expect McLaren will be very happy filling the holes within existing structure. We know a spider version of the 570S will appear next year and I’d bet everything it will in time do an ultra-light, track focussed version as its answer to the Porsche 911 GT3RS. Before then however it has the rather more pressing business of replacing the 650S with an all new car, currently codenamed P14, and figuring out whether it wants to bite the bait provided by the forthcoming Aston Martin/Red Bull and Mercedes-Benz hypercars and develop a replacement for the P1.

But in the very long term it’s hard to see McLaren continuing to rely on different versions of the same monocoque, engine and gearbox forever. Ultimately I expect an additional front-engined platform will be needed, just because you can so do much more with it: McLaren could make a svelte coupe and a real roadster to slot in under the 570S, but still selling for six figures, and should it ever decide to do a 2+2, it could be achieved without letting the wheelbase get out of control. It would also allow a flagship GT to be developed.

For now however, McLaren is on a roll and deservedly so: its products are world class and the rate of improvement shows no sign of abating. Not bad for a company that launched its first car just five years ago.