Despite constant rumors that it’s looking into building one, McLaren has made it clear that it has no intention of entering the SUV market. According to the automaker, an SUV isn’t a part of its long-term Track22 business and development plan. Instead, McLaren will solely focus on building two-seat sports cars to help build its legacy as one of the most important sports car brands in the world. Any other model that deviates from that plan would be a non-starter from the get-go.

Considering the fact that supercar and luxury brands like Lamborghini, Bentley, and Rolls-Royce all have SUVs now, it’s easy to see a world where companies like McLaren and Ferrari build their own SUVs to compete against their rivals. But both companies have drawn a line in the sand as far as their positions go, and it looks like neither is going to budge anytime soon.

In McLaren’s case, SUVs just don’t fit into its long-term plans. Tony Joseph, president of McLaren North America, told Automotive News as much: "We have been a company in existence for a long time prior to automotive, and we're a profitable company, so there's really no need to go into SUVs," he said. "We want to concentrate just on two-seat sports cars and be known as the iconic sports car company."

It’s not that McLaren can’t build an SUV; it probably could if it really wanted to. It’s that it doesn’t want to. That’s a big difference. It could be seen as a waste of an opportunity to make money given how popular crossovers and SUVs are, but it’s not like McLaren is in financial trouble. In 2017, the company posted its biggest sales year, delivering 3,340 cars the entire year. Halfway through 2018, it’s already on pace to break its 2017 sales mark. Those sales numbers are expected to trend north in the coming years, too, as the company’s plan to unveil 15 new models by 2022 gets into high gear.

McLaren may regret not building an SUV when the market for one is hot, but at this point, it’s easy to see the company’s reasoning on why it has no plans to. For now, the British automaker wants to preserve its identity as an exclusive purveyor of exotic cars. You can’t fault McLaren for that, even if history shows that brand identity almost always takes a backseat to profitability.

McLaren might end up bucking that trend in the future. Only time will tell. For now, the British automaker is focusing its attention on building more two-seat sports cars, some of which are expected to arrive in hybrid or all-electric forms.

References

Read our full speculative review on the 2020 McLaren SUV.

Read more McLaren news.