McLaren will expand manufacturing in the United Kingdom and develop its first SUV after receiving a £500 million investment from L’IMAD, a sovereign fund run by the Abu Dhabi government. The cash, roughly $672 million at current exchange rates, is earmarked for manufacturing and engineering tied to McLaren’s next-generation vehicles and will support new facilities and hires across the U.K.
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The company said the funding will underwrite a new vehicle assembly plant and boost capacity at existing sites, including the McLaren Production Centre in Woking and the McLaren Composites Technology Centre in South Yorkshire. Those investments will supplement two recently opened U.K. sites, a design building in Bicester and a testing and development facility in the Midlands.
McLaren also confirmed a strategic shift to bring all future powertrain work in-house. The plan begins with two new engines and matching transmissions that the company says will be fully designed and manufactured internally. Executives expect the measures to add at least 1,000 jobs across the different sites by 2032 and to double the company’s manufacturing workforce.
Details about the new SUV remain limited. Earlier reporting suggested the model will be McLaren’s first with four doors and five seats, and could use an all-wheel-drive V-8 hybrid layout. That report described a silhouette comparable to larger performance crossovers, featuring a prominent rear spoiler and diffuser.
The investment and product push come after McLaren’s sale in October 2024 to CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi investment group that folded its Forseven startup into McLaren. The reshuffle accompanies product changes across the lineup: an anonymous McLaren dealer briefed on internal plans said the Artura is set to be discontinued by 2028. The dealer cited a delayed launch caused by semiconductor shortages and early quality issues involving the oil pump and software as factors that discouraged buyers, along with the model’s shift from a V-8 to a V-6 hybrid and styling that underperformed expectations.
The Artura is slated to be replaced by a new mid-engined model codenamed P34, which the dealer said should arrive by the end of 2027. That car is expected to continue with a twin-turbo V-6 hybrid architecture and reports place its power around 800 horsepower, with an upgraded interior and a design that nods to the brand’s F1 heritage. McLaren’s announced investments make clear the company intends to centralise engineering and production in the U.K. as it rolls out these next-generation cars.
