Apple Is In Talks To Buy McLaren.

There is major automotive news currently blowing up Twitter, Facebook, and all of Google news. And holy crap is it big.

Apple has been attempting to, or at least they’ve been saying they have, create a car. To this point it’s been rumored to be a self-driving, Google fighting, amorphous blob, or at least that’s what the totally fictional renders suggest. But why make a car when you could just buy a whole company right? So in true Steve Jobs fashion, there’s just one more thing they didn’t mention. Apple is now looking to buy McLaren. Sooooo, the Apple car will have a twin-turbo V8?

According to a report from the Financial Times, and those very close to the deal, McLaren and Apple have been in talks for months about it being a full takeover. Meaning, this wouldn’t be a 51% with creative control type of deal. No, that means Apple gets everything and all control of the company itself and, likely, control over design, pricing, marketing, and brand identity.

According to Jalopnik:

But there’s way more to McLaren than meets the untrained eye. Not only is the successor to the vaunted McLaren P1 rumored to be electric, but the company itself maintains operations far beyond what you would initially think. Its Applied Technologies Group supplies electronics to everyone from Formula One to NASCAR, and it has done extensive work on data center optimization.

Coming from a purely marketing background, I’m very torn on this news. On one hand I am a HUGE fan of McLaren and their cars, though I’ve never driven one, and enjoy the fact that they are not a very mainstream company. Apple’s involvement would blow that sky high. Everything they do is highly specialized and quite custom to each customer’s needs and wants. I like that they are small enough to do that, yet large enough to front an F1 team. On the other hand I think this could be a game changing positive for McLaren. The influx of money Apple brings to the table, coupled with the aforementioned Applied Technologies group, would no doubt send McLaren into a realm where they never before thought was possible, giving them access to resources that only a handful of companies in the world could offer.

As this is breaking news, come back here as we will update this with any other news as it becomes available.

(Source: Jalopnik)