This just in, and let’s provide a measure of perspective here: McLaren Automotive, which produces highly specialized hypercars for the McLaren Group, just rolled the 20,000th McLaren road car from its assembly center in Woking, Surrey, England. The vehicle that reached the landmark was a right-hand-drive McLaren 600LT Spider in Chicane Grey from the automaker’s Sports Series range. Underscoring the exclusivity of the number is the fact that the (slightly) foregoing 600LT coupe variant has already been completely sold out.
With the industry jammed to bursting by global production titans from Ford to Hyundai and Kia, a little context is very much in order here. McLaren Automotive has a workforce of some 2,300 employees that use hand-fitment and -assembly techniques also exclusively when building each new road car. It’s a heritage that dates to the 1960s, whjen Bruce McLaren first left his native New Zealand for England and started hand-building race cars of his own design. And their attainability puts their production numbers in a new, very bright light: Consider a newer McLaren design, the 720S, which just added World Performance Car to its list of media accolades. Each 720S has a base list price of $293,000, but its 4.0-liter, twin-turbo V-8 thumps out 710hp and propels the mega-GT to 60 MPH in just 2.8 seconds. Like some people say, everything’s relative.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 