McLaren to mortgage historic cars

McLaren are poised to mortgage their historic Formula 1 cars alongside the McLaren Technology Centre in a bid to raise £275 million to survive to Covid-19 pandemic.

GPFans has learned that the McLaren Group are considering the move, after the UK government turned down a request for a £150m loan.

The deal is similar to that which has been struck between Williams and Michael Latifi, the team using their Grove headquarters and cars as collateral against a rumoured £50m loan.

"Like many other British businesses McLaren has been severely affected by the current pandemic and we are therefore exploring a variety of different funding options to help navigate these short-term business interruptions," a spokesperson for the manufacturer told Motorsport.com.

Reports have valued the MTC at £200m while the extensive car collection, including championship winning cars of James Hunt, Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton, is estimated at £250m.

The McLaren Group consists of McLaren Racing, McLaren Automotive and McLaren Applied.

The lockdown has not only resulted in a loss of advertising, merchandising and television revenue on the racing side of things, but also a significant loss of revenue through sales of supercars.

McLaren currently have around 4,000 staff on the books and are making use of the government furlough job retention scheme.

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