Mike Flewitt is stepping down as chief executive officer at McLaren Automotive, the supercar business of McLaren Group.
Flewitt first joined McLaren Automotive in 2012 and was promoted to the CEO role in 2013.
The role will be filled by Michael Macht, a non-executive director at McLaren Group and a former CEO of Porsche, until a replacement for Flewitt can be found.
“I feel incredibly proud to have led McLaren Automotive through most of its first, highly successful decade and am privileged to have played a part in the incredible McLaren story,” Flewitt said in a statement released on Wednesday.
McLaren Automotive was only established in 2010 but already has a collection of supercars that are as desirable as models from Ferrari and Lamborghini, both of which have been in the business for decades. McLaren also outsells Lamborghini when it comes to supercar sales.
As CEO, Flewitt was influential in that success, though he has also been criticized for replacing models too quickly, and as a result hurting resale values. In the early months of the pandemic, Flewitt announced that McLaren Automotive would slow its aggressive Track25 plan which called for 18 new cars or derivatives to be launched in the space of about seven years.
McLaren Automotive has also struggled much more than rivals in dealing with the pandemic. In the past year, the company has had to shed workers, and its McLaren Group parent has had to sell and lease back its headquarters, sell a stake in its Formula One team, and sell its McLaren Applied technology business. The company also needed additional investment from main shareholder Bahrain and new shareholder Saudi Arabia.
