McLaren's second coming

New CEO Michael Leiters is on a mission to raise McLaren's game, promising a streamlined range, higher quality and no more excuses

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IT WOULDN'T BE THE BRITISH CAR INDUSTRY IF IT DIDN'T lurch from triumph to disaster with inescapable regularity. Regardless of the sector that UK companies operate in - and the sunlit uplands that they occasionally enjoy there always seems to be a cloud on the horizon ready to rain on their celebrations, and in some cases wash them away completely.

For every Range Rover scaling new heights of profitability, there's a Jaguar limping through losses. For every Caterham, Ariel, Morgan or BAC there's a TVR, Westfield or Keating (remember them?). And then there's Aston Martin, Lotus and McLaren, who regularly enjoy drinking to their successes with little thought of the hangover to follow.

McLaren's hangover might not be as bad as the one that has reduced bosses at Gaydon to mainlining Nurofen, but then not having all your financial laundry aired in public does have its advantages. It's also no worse than the morning-after-the-night-before currently being felt in Hethel, although it's no better either. Both Lotus and McLaren have struggled in 2022 with the launches of all-new sports cars, delayed to such an extent that mid-cycle facelifts surely won't be far behind the first customer deliveries.

While Lotus puts Emira delays down to parts supply issues, the pandemic, Brexit and the war in Ukraine, new McLaren CEO Michael Leiters puts Artura delays down to the car simply not being good enough. There should be no compromises,' he insists. 'If you are willing to compromise you will lose quality, and the whole company has to understand what an important asset quality is.

Leiters cut his teeth at Porsche on his way to becoming chief technology officer at Ferrari, so he knows that quality is what brands like these trade on. Which is why one of the first big decisions he took at McLaren was to delay the launch of the Artura.