PAUL HARRIS
MANAGING DIRECTOR — ASIA PACIFIC, MCLAREN AUTOMOTIVE
“2023 was an inspiring year at McLaren as our business operations continued to focus on quality and delivering excellence.
Against this backdrop, the global headwinds caused several industry-wide disruptions in supply chain, logistics and sentiment.
Regarding these global challenges, our business has a resilience and robustness born from the passion and interest of our McLaren clientele.
While business cost base and other macro-economic challenges remain, we continue to remain hopeful for global conflict resolution, and maintain a positive outlook for a stronger 2024.
Reacting To Global Conditions
Worldwide shortage of semiconductors are affecting the entire automotive industry, resulting in production delays across the various brands.
However, in the period after the pandemic, we noticed a strong desire from the ownership community for in-person experiences, both with the brand and with the local ownership community. For McLaren, we enjoy a close relationship with our customers and so it was a natural shift for us and McLaren Singapore.
Resilience and agility are key when reacting to the changing local market conditions. While we recognise the changing landscapes, McLaren is poised to face such challenges. Testament to this is our automotive heritage and achievement in a short space of time, with this year marking our 60th anniversary.
Some examples of our agility include: Expertise in lightweight carbon architecture; we have an advantage over our competitors when introducing new power trains, like electric technologies.
With the Artura, we have launched the all-new McLaren Carbon Lightweight Architecture featuring an ethernet electrical system, hybrid powertrain etc., which future-proofs our brand in term of new technologies.
Customer Focused
Customers remain at the centre of our brand and we have had the pleasure to resume our close relationships with them through a variety of local and global events — track days, physical product launches and global-led activities such as ice driving.
For 2024, with a strong order book and deliveries beginning for our new benchmark-beating McLaren 750S, complemented by the new high-performance hybrid Artura and GT model, we remain optimistic and confident.
WHO ELSE HAS COMMENTED?
STORM-ASIA talks with decision makers from different industries to get a sense of how they have taken the goings-on of 2023 in their stride and what will continue into 2024. What is there to look forward to?
From telcos to automotive, governance to healthcare and media and advertising, the opinions are considered while the expectations for 2024 are different.
Their opinions will be featured in this final week of 2023 and will hopefully present you with some ideas about how to plan the year ahead. Read Awaiting 2024 With Trepidation to see the list of interviews.
