I just briefly opened LinkedIn to check on responses to a job ad I'd shared, and I scrolled quickly through some posts written in curiously short sentences. Like this. But each a new paragraph too. I noticed a picture of a car.
It was only on the screen for the briefest flicker of a moment as I scrolled past, but I immediately knew who had made it: not by colour, nor by location, but because its doors were open. Ah, dihedral doors: a McLaren! A glimpse was enough for it to be immediately recognisable.
Now, McLaren has not been without ongoing problems. It lost £873 million last year, prompting Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund, already its biggest stakeholder, to take full ownership in April. The company's first quarter of this year was better, following the launches of the 750S and Artura, but still wasn't ultimately profitable.
And noting how hard it is for an independent car maker with a small range and small sales to make money, McLaren says it is "continuing to explore OEM and/or technical partnerships with industry partners".
While we love driving McLaren's cars, I think of its range as quite crowded. In last month's Q1 earnings release, McLaren said it operates in "distinct segments", including Grand Tourer (GTS), Supercar (Artura) and Supercar (750S).
But I'm not sure how distinct those segments truly are. These are all two-seaters, mid-engined, similarly tubbed and similarly proportioned.
And if you browse the McLaren Cars website for the GTS, it mentions the car being a 'supercar' or having the DNA of one six times but doesn't use the term 'grand tourer' or 'GT' once. If a customer-facing blurb doesn't make its purpose distinct, what chance for the potential buyer?
Perhaps as a result of this crowding, I couldn't have told you which McLaren I scrolled past today, but I thought it at least encouraging that I knew in an instant who had made it. McLaren first used dihedral-opening doors on the F1, and they were later adopted by the 'new range of cars that began with 2011's MP4-12C.
They have been used on every model since, bar the doorless Solus GT (from McLaren's Ultimate range, the one truly differentiated area of the model line). On seeing them today, I felt a bit differently about them. Those doors felt like heritage.
Only 13 years of it in 'new McLaren Automotive terms, but still. They didn't seem novel; they felt established. Despite the ongoing troubles, I felt encouraged by that, too.
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Interesting observation about the dihedral doors. Trouble is, most times that you see a McLaren its doors are shut, so it becomes difficult for the casual observer to recognise a McLaren from similar supercars like Ferrari, Lamborghini and a host of others, let alone distinguish the exact model. I agree that to turn a profit the company needs a much wider range with less reliance on supercars of limited practicality that few can afford. Much as I detest SUVs, I suspect that Lotus and Porsche have the right idea!
I recently had the occasion to admire a few cars on display at the local, brand-new McLaren showroom in the big Japanese city where I live.
Not that I was particularly interested in them, but - as car enthusiast and as a long standing engineer in the automotive business - I always try to remain up to date.
Now, from a detached perspective, if we take my sincere passion and enthusiasm for cars and professional knowledge about them, and we combine it to my age, I should represent the perfect specimen of the discerning customer willing to spend his money on a fancy proposal from a fancy OEM.
But, in fact, as I was walking around the cars on display, I realized that I was not able to tell one from the other. They were all looking alike, because - we know - they all are basically the same car. In the segment where Ferrari has one car and so has Lamborghini, they have their entire line up of god-only-knows how many derivatives of the same car.
Now, if a person like me is not able to tell one car from the other and to appreciate the value proposition of each of them, how is McLaren thinking to explain it to yet another bored über wealthy individual who is just looking out for the next flashy toy to show off at the golf club?