https://www.crash.net/f1/news/938157/1/mclaren-could-mortgage-factory-and-classic-f1-cars
Sad but they've been struggling for a while. This is the bad side of having a foreign fund calling the shots. Mike has been fighting an internal battle that he could never win. Personally I wouldn't rule out Stroll buying it at a bargain price. It's road cars have been depreciating rapidly and plenty of customer issues didn't help. Ron must be watching with interest. The building feels unique and probably is.
One could say that most car makers are laying off staff, since there are no sales. Most dealers are closed, there are no new orders. Covid-19 affects the whole car industry, but obviously some companies are more resilient than others.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52808927 McLaren's Formula 1 operation expects to lose about 70 people from its 800-strong workforce. However, there will be a second phase of redundancies in 2021 once the team has taken a recent sport-wide budget cap agreement into account. While the coronavirus crisis has driven the redundancies across the whole group, the cost-cap has been the biggest influence on the racing team. Many other teams - especially the big ones such as Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull - will also have to cut head count but there may be other ways of doing it for some, such as redeployment in the wider group for the big car companies.
The difference is that Mac builds cars and sends them to dealers and Ferrari builds each one to spec. Some Ferrari models have a one year waiting list. Unless new orders drop Ferrari can keep people going for a while. Mac has like 90 unsold $350 grand cars sitting on dealer lots in the USA. Its going to take while to clear that out given used cars are a bargain.
No doubt Ferrari is in better shape, but they have multiplied the dealer demo cars (which did not exist a few years ago) so they are not completely immune.
No one is immune. But some are in better shape than others. The market for 2 seat sports cars is really small. If you cut back 15% of your sales you really get hurt given the fixed costs of overhead to make them, which doesn't change.
McLaren builds his cars in batches; it's apparently easier to calculate costs and plan production that way. One can obtain better prices on sub-contracted parts, and outsorced components if you order that way, I was told by an insider once. This may have its drawback.
Has Stroll enough money and buy mclaren too? Can put his daughter to drive there and let the kids play with eachother
Buying a company and making a success of it is a different thing. There are plenty of business people who bought a sports car company and couldn't make it work. I think the initial investment is only half the battle.
I see a total of 251 "New" McLaren's available on Autotrader right now and yes there are over 90 720S Including Coupe and Spoiler) currently available so your comment about Mac having 90 unsold $350K cars seems to be spot on. This is not a new phenomenon for McLaren either as their new inventory was at a similar and sometimes even higher number prior to COVID 19. This number has been consistent and has even dropped a bit in recent months due to some great discounts. This is despite McLaren offering a really attractive closed leasing program on a lot of its cars which could also hurt the company significantly when the cars are turned back in. Aston Martin is in even worse shape. 509 New Cars listed for sale on Autotrader. They too have been offering very attractive closed-end leases and without them their sales would have been extraordinarily bad over the last 12 months. The SUV should help their bottom line but with all the debt they have that may not even be enough to save them. It is definitely a good time to be a buyer and perhaps maybe even better to be a lessee...
They fired the head of Aston today. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/26/luxury-carmaker-aston-martin-neglected-to-inform-its-ceo-that-he-was-fired/#2903f06e19c6