McLaren: The dealer network takes shape

The McLaren dealer network is starting to take shape

Most of what we’ve written about McLaren in the last month or two hasn’t been about the new McLaren – the McLaren MP4 12C – but about McLaren’s venerable hypercar the McLaren F1.

Firts we had Ron Dennis telling anyone who’d listen – quite rightly – that the showdown Top Gear staged between the Mac and the Bug had to be re-run repeatedly until the Bug actually won, but Ron being Ron had to go a step further and proclaim the Veyron a ‘Piece of Junk’. But it made his point.

Since then we’ve had the picture of 21 McLaren F1s at Woking, which has seen more traffic than any other article we’ve published this year, which if nothing else shows what a draw the F1 still is for petrol-heads round the world.

We have to go back to the end of March for current news on McLaren – and that was the launch of the MP4 12C configurator – and at the beginning of March we had the Button and Hamilton review of the MP4-12C. But the big news this year was the live launch we carried of McLaren Automotive in February where Ron Dennis revealed McLaren’s future plans, and their plans for the McLaren dealer network.

That prospective dealer network gets a news update today as we learn that McLaren Automotive’s first 23 retailers  willbe confirmed ahead of MP4-12C’s global debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July.

McLaren Automotive has confirmed that it will be represented by many of the world’s best automotive retailers in the following cities and markets:

We have a pretty good idea who quite a number of these are – especially in the UK – but we won’t rock the boat for now. But as soon as we know the ink is dry and there’s no fall out if we report it we’ll let you know.

But these are just the start. There will be a McLaren Automotive global retail network of 35 of the world’s best car retailers in 19 countries in 2011, with further growth planned from 2012.

Ambitious. Rightly so.

By Cars UK