McLaren Unveils Its Sports Car Plan

When Ron Dennis left the job of team principal of the McLaren team last year, he said that he would henceforth concentrate on the McLaren Group’s plans to build a new sports car.

On Thursday, the company announced details of the plan, which is obviously a way, among other things, for McLaren to fight with Ferrari off the track. The car, called the MP4-12C, will go on sale in late 2011 for between 125,000, or $191,127, and 150,000 pounds, The Associated Press reported.

‘‘Following any recession, there’s a resurgence,’’ said Dennis, who is the chairman of McLaren Automotive, at the company’s headquarters — and factory site — in Woking, south of London. ‘‘We intend to catch that wave.’’

The company aims to make up to 1,000 of the 12C cars next year, with up to 40 percent being sold in North America, the report said. The care will compete with the Ferrari 458 Italia, priced at around 170,000 pounds, and the Mercedes SLS AMG at around 145,000 pounds.

‘‘Our volumes are very much linked to how we see the recovery,’’ Dennis added. Production forecast to reach around 4,000 by the middle of the decade.

‘‘Although we’re investing hundreds of millions of pounds into these cars, we have no desire at all to be the biggest sports car manufacturer,’’ said Antony Sheriff, McLaren Automotive managing director. ‘‘In fact, we take great pride in being one of the most exclusive, and aim to keep it that way.’’

Dennis also wants to use the production of the cars as a way to ensure the company’s future, since F1 is so precarious as a business alone, and he quoted the fact that 101 Formula One teams have vanished since McLaren started on the circuit in 1966.

‘‘To stay solely and exclusively a Formula One team is almost going to surely lead to extinction,’’ he said, noting the company had already successfully moved into electronics, applied technology and marketing.

Only 107 of the company’s first road car, the McLaren F1, were built 15 years ago, of which 64 were road cars and the rest racing cars, said The AP.

Autosport.com also reported that McLaren had no intention of racing the new sports car for the moment. “We don’t have plans to race it, but we do recognize that some of our customers will want to race this car,” Autosport reports Dennis as saying. “At the appropriate time we will form a department to service that – but thoughts on a factory team entering any series are premature.”