McLaren moves U.S. HQ as sales boom

McLaren North America is moving its headquarters from midtown Manhattan to near Dallas, having outgrown its original office, the company announced Thursday.

The UK automaker has been on a product push the past couple of years, which has led to ballooning sales and more needs from its office space.

"As we've grown and expanded, it became crystal clear that being in the city just is not very practical and doesn't make a lot of sense," Tony Joseph, the automaker's president, told Automotive News. "Unfortunately, I've got some on my team who have not seen a McLaren because we're on the 24th floor of a high-rise."

McLaren will go from a 4,500-square-foot office suite in Manhattan to a 30,000-square-foot center in Coppell, Texas, a Dallas suburb, which will cost significantly less than the automaker is paying for the New York space, Joseph said.

McLaren began U.S. sales of its hand-built supercars late in 2011, and North America has quickly become the brand's largest global market. Last year, North America represented 33 percent of the automaker's 4,806 global deliveries.

McLaren launched with nine U.S. dealerships, including a location in Dallas. In 2013, when the automaker was still building out its retail presence, the Dallas location sold more McLarens than any other in the world, Joseph said.

"Overall, it's a fairly large market," he said of Dallas. "They should be somewhere between 85 and 90 new units this year."

McLaren has 24 dealerships in the U.S. and three in Canada.

In 2018, McLaren sold 1,569 vehicles in North America, an increase of 21 percent from a year earlier. Joseph said through August, McLaren's North American sales are up another 17 percent.

Joseph, already relocated to the Dallas area, said McLaren plans to have employees working from a temporary office in Texas by year end, with building renovations set to wrap up by February. He said he expects most of the employees to make the transition from New York. McLaren has 27 employees in North America, though roughly half are field-based.

With the move to an industrial park, McLaren will have over 567 percent more space. And the brand plans to put that space to use.

Through its bespoke program, McLaren Special Operations, the automaker lets customers design their own vehicles. But that often requires a trip to McLaren's global headquarters in Woking, England.

Now customers will have another option.

"We're going to have our own on-site MSO area," Joseph said. "Ideally, we'd like the customers who are doing heavy specifications to go to the UK, but that's not always practical. So we'll provide it on-site. It provides a real ease for them to get in and out of Dallas."

Joseph said the building is about three miles from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and that's by design.

While McLaren's size in North America is a mere fraction compared with other automakers, it's the latest brand to move corporate offices across state lines and follows giant Toyota Motor North America in selecting the Dallas area.

In June, Mitsubishi Motors North America said it would be moving its U.S. headquarters from Southern California to Franklin, Tennessee, by year end. Last year, Mercedes-Benz USA opened its new headquarters in Atlanta, having moved from Montvale, New Jersey. Volkswagen of America moved its North American headquarters from suburban Detroit to Herndon, Virginia., near Washington, D.C., in 2008. And Nissan moved its North American headquarters from Los Angeles to Nashville in 2006.

When Joseph started looking for a relocation site a couple of years ago, he said he had KPMG conduct a study. The company came back with two suggestions: Atlanta and Dallas.

"As I went through it in a little more detail, Dallas made more sense for it being centrally located," Joseph said, pointing to shorter flight times from Dallas to the automaker's dealerships compared with flights out of New York City.

"We're going to evolve what our office will be," Joseph said. "We're going to provide both technical and sales training at this location. So for dealers and sales and technical people coming in and out, it really is a perfect location."

When it comes to McLaren's new location, about 60 percent of it will be dedicated to the technical side of business, including the company's internal fleet of vehicles.

"We've grown our fleet of cars significantly over the past few years," Joseph said, noting that among McLaren's press, marketing and track fleets, the automaker has around 50 cars to manage.

"It's going to allow us to be able to maintain the fleet on site ourselves internally."