Exclusive: McLaren plots reinvention in full merger with Forseven
Full interview with CEO as British firm sets its sights on dramatic expansion beyond mid-engined supercars.
McLaren Automotive is to merge with the start-up company Forseven in a bombshell move that will enable McLaren to expand beyond making mid-engined supercars for the first time.
The move secures the future of McLaren, giving it the capital, technology and resources to go into areas of the market it has not been able to finance itself.
Forseven is a British start-up that has been quietly assembling a team of more than 700 industry professionals, among them big-name designers, engineers and executives from rival British car companies, and has been building towards the launch of a range of luxury models under a new brand.
The common link between the two companies is the Abu Dhabi government-backed investment company CYVN Holdings, which has facilitated a merger operating under the McLaren Automotive name that will enable the models in development at Forseven to come to market under the McLaren badge.
This gives Forseven a shortcut to market, and McLaren the expansion and security it craves and the ability to better compete with the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin and Bentley.
The official announcement confirms an Autocar story from February, which revealed a merger was being planned between McLaren Automotive and Forseven to enable McLaren to expand beyond its range of supercars.
The new combined company, McLaren Group Holdings, will be led by Forseven CEO Nick Collins who – in his only interview with an automotive title – told Autocar that “we’re about to embark on the most exciting British automotive story in decades”.
Collins was previously a senior engineer at Ford and latterly JLR, where he oversaw the likes of the Defender and Range Rover.
The Forseven name had never been intended as a customer-facing brand, and will cease to exist.
“It’s just a holding name, and we’ve been building at an incredible pace,” said Collins, who took up the role of Forseven CEO in January last year.
The first official details of the new-era McLarens will be revealed later this year, with Collins promising “a bigger-bang event” that goes beyond this initial corporate announcement.
In the meantime, the company says work will "commence immediately" on a six-month turnaround of the existing McLaren Automotive business.
He declined to go into specifics in terms of any of the models planned but confirmed it was a range of cars in the luxury market at higher price points, which would make for a broader portfolio of McLaren models than exists today. Our artist’s renderings accompanying this story imagine what some of those cars might look like.
“It’s not as challenging as you think to explore how the design language of this brand [McLaren] could evolve in the future and still maintain everything that they’ve already done and a lot more,” said Collins.
Design work is being overseen by Alister Whelan, an ex-JLR colleague of Collins. Before Collins arrived at Forseven in January 2024, design models and feasibility studies for models had been created but “we have evolved a long way since then”.
The design team is made up of around 50 people and Collins said their output was “staggering” over the past 12 months, with virtual reality being used alongside physical models to allow design work to take place 24/7 with a further team based in Australia alongside the UK operation.
“They’re really looking into the fundamental building blocks of British design,” he said. “There are some amazingly consistent elements of British design, and particularly British luxury design, that permeate British brands. We’ve taken that, plus some McLaren influence, into where we’re going to go.”
Prior to the McLaren deal, it had been Forseven’s intention to go to market as its own brand, albeit not called Forseven, and it had been working on different brands and names.
Intriguingly, the models that have been in creation at Forseven are not solely electric (an easy assumption to make, given its website URL is forseven-ev.com) and McLaren’s expansion into other segments will include high-performance internal combustion engines.
Collins said: “The future of propulsion is multi-propulsion. The more luxurious the vehicle gets, the better electric is for it because it’s quieter, more refined. So it will play a role.
“We genuinely think you can make a brilliant electric car in certain segments, but through the way the world is transiting at different paces in different parts of the world, we will have different propulsion technologies to allow us to grow in the right way.”
Another one of CYVN’s investments is in Chinese electric car maker Nio. Collins said a technology licence existed between Forseven and Nio “that we have incorporated into the cars” but it was for specific “technology chunks” rather than for an architecture on which to base the cars as buying in architectures was “the graveyard of car projects”.
“We’ll be deploying [the technology] in a very unique way that’s specific to what we’re trying to achieve; think of it as an accelerator to what we do,” said Collins.
Based on that description, examples of the technology that Forseven could use from Nio for future McLarens are its autonomous driving features and its battery-swapping technology for electric cars. And when it comes to architectures, McLaren’s experience in composites is likely to come into play.
CYVN has also acquired Gordon Murray Technologies, which includes the rights for the iStream manufacturing process. This process is more cost effective than traditional manufacturing and allows for lighter vehicle weight. Collins said “the spirit” of the process would be used for production in the future and “research projects are ongoing” to that end.
Vehicle development is a huge part of what GMT does, and its engineers are sure to be playing a leading role in developing this new era of McLarens.
Collins said Forseven was looking at the evolution of luxury brands in other markets – for example, Louis Vuitton moving into selling trainers – as a way of broadening and redefining what the types of cars companies like McLaren can make and sell. To that end, Forseven was “trying to think a bit more luxury than automotive in exploring what we do”.
Collins said: “We have to overcome that British reserve: why can’t you do that? Automotive wisdom might say you can’t do this at this time, but luxury wisdom in adjacent segments would say you can.
“The first thing we could do is fail to try. We’re not going to be reckless or stupid. But expect us to be a little bit unconventional in how we do it.”
Indeed, Collins hinted that Forseven could even look to revive vehicle types from the past. He cited the Defender 90 as an example of a car where outwardly it seemed “the three-door car market was dead” but “if you get the car right, then it will recreate a market or generate a market”.
“If you get the cars right, you will distort the market, because you will drag people from other luxury brands or drag people up who will do whatever they can to get the car, and you’ll create success through that,” added Collins.
“I fundamentally believe success comes from great products and if you don’t have great products, it doesn’t matter what you write down as your ambition as it’s not going to happen.”
Collins promised cutting-edge technology for the new McLarens and would “play a huge role” in everything the brand does, including in the hardware and software underpinning the car.
“Whether it's a direct or indirect relationship, technology plays a role,” he said. “It might be manufacturing technology in terms of how you build the car that gives it a certain weight level [iStream]. It might be technology that gives it performance, quietness, connectivity, or active safety. People buy a package.
“I also believe when you enter segments that you've not been in before, brand advantage is good. Design advantage is good. Everything else we underpin with technology.”
More broadly on the new company and the emergence of CYVN in the automotive industry, Collins said “this is not a vanity project”. “This is a financial investment that we will build out and, in my mind, become one of the best, if not the best car company in the world,” he said. “That might take a very long time, but the people that back this have a long-term horizon for a sustainably profitable business that is admired around the world.
“I’m sure there will be plenty of people out there throwing rocks at it and saying it can’t be done, and such and such can’t happen. But I really want this to be something that Britain can become very proud of.”
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