Surprise! McLaren is brainstorming cars with more than two doors and two seats

“McLaren is a startup company with heritage. It’s really crazy. Its automotive division is only 13 years old, but it’s been racing for 61 years.”

Tobias Sühlmann is describing the challenge of creating a design direction that will signpost the future of McLaren’s supercars. Unlike Ferrari or Porsche, he doesn’t have 70 years of heritage in sports cars to draw inspiration from. “I love this challenge,” he beams.

Sühlmann is a German with plenty of experience of design at a storied British marque. He joined McLaren in 2023 from Bentley (having worked on the Solus GT during an earlier stint at McLaren) and has previously worked at Aston Martin.

But McLaren poses a new challenge. Does he admit that the Artura was perhaps a little too conservative on the outside, given it was an all-new tub, all-new engine and all-new hybrid underneath?

“In the future we would like to see more radical things,” is his diplomatic answer. “We would like to have radical change but always have clear McLaren [DNA] in terms of performance, in terms of lightweight. This is super important that we are true to our DNA and we will not walk away from that.”

The design trademark of the previous McLaren regime was the ‘swoosh’ logo as seen in the company’s badge, which was manifested into the headlight shapes of the 650S, P1 and 570S, as well as hinted at by air intakes atop the hybrid hypercar. So what will the next headline McLaren design detail be?

“We are car designers, we are not stylists,” says Tobias. “Therefore if you shape something through aerodynamics then it's very bold and very simple. It’s also timeless: if you look at a Concorde for example, it’s a very old airplane, but still modern. Still one of the most beautiful planes in the world. This was shaped by aerodynamics."

He talks about a move away from ‘shrink-wrapping’ the bodywork over the technical components to ‘vacuuming’, to give sharper, crisp lines. “There’s so many cool elements we can play with, but we don't need to have our swoosh signs everywhere.”

Tobias also hints at the worst-kept secret in supercars: that McLaren will bow to the inevitable and follow the likes of Aston Martin, Ferrari and Lamborghini into offering a more, um, family-friendly model.

Or as he delicately puts it: “The possibility is there that we grow the portfolio, we’re brainstorming at the moment.

“One brainstorm idea is to sketch a little bit [to ask] is there more than two seats? Is there more than two doors? And therefore it's super important to have a design signature where you find elements that [says] McLaren. But with these elements you're also able to separate different models from each other.”

So, goodbye to the criticism that ‘all McLarens look the same’, and hello to an era where McLarens are possibly more radical to look at… but might not all look like low, pointy, mid-engined supercars. Watch this space.