Why Does the McLaren P1 Coupe Cost Over $1 Million?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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When 24/7 Wall St. recently examined the 10 Most Expensive Cars in America, the price for the winner was not even close to the balance of the cars. The McLaren P1 is priced at $1,155,000, which is higher than the second place car, the Porsche 918 Spyder, at $929,995.

As the analysis points out:

McLaren is first and foremost an engineering company, and it is a special event when a car such as the McLaren P1 appears on the market. When it was first introduced in 2013 as a followup to the McLaren F1 of the 1990s, all 375 P1s sold out in just eight months. It was the first time that McLaren Automotive — the manufacturing subsidiary of McLaren Group — posted profits. McLaren’s CEO Mike Flewitt was tempted to produce more cars but abstained to preserve the exclusivity that is so essential to the McLaren P1 brand. The P1 has a top speed of 217 mph, and accelerates from zero to 62 mph in 2.8 seconds.

The research was based on the ultra-luxury models being separated into two categories: performance and luxury vehicles. Cars such as the McLaren P1, the Lamborghini Aventador and the Ferrari F12berlinetta are built for speed and handling, meant to mimic the style of racing vehicles.

Others, including the three Rolls-Royce models to make this list — the Phantom, Ghost and Wraith — are designed to invoke class and style. “The Phantom and the Ghost and Wraith and the Bentley Mulsanne are not slow cars with limited power by any means, they’re extremely powerful, and for their size and weight, they are shockingly quick,” said Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Brauer. “But they are not by nature performance vehicles like the other cars on the list. They are luxury vehicles.”

To identify the 10 most expensive American cars, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Kelley Blue Book’s current fair purchase price, which is the site’s estimate for how much an auto buyer should expect to pay for a vehicle based on existing purchase data. We considered only 2015 models that were sold in the United States. In addition, we considered model specifications, which were obtained from manufacturer websites.

ALSO READ: The 10 Cheapest Cars in America

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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