We had to check the date on the calendar for this one, but no, it’s real. The McLaren F1 Team has partnered with blender-builder extraordinaire Nutribullet on a new line of blenders that wear the racing team’s iconic colors. The products blessed with McLaren’s branding include Nutribullet’s Portable Blender, 900 Series, and Ultra 1200 series. The two larger blenders are gray with papaya-colored accents, while the Portable Blender can be had in that scheme as well as full-on papaya with gray accents. Each blender displays the McLaren F1 team logo, as well.
As of the time of this writing, we can only find the McLaren x Nutribullet collection on Nutribullet’s UK website, which makes sense considering it’s the home country of the car manufacturer and racing team. The two portable blenders are selling for £49.99, while the 900 Series goes for £99.99 and the Ultra 1200 for £149.99. The 900 Series, however, is already sold out.
McLaren Loves Making Deals
McLaren is no stranger to licensing its brand and logo to other companies. You can buy McLaren K-Swiss shoes, LEGO Speed Champions and Tehcnic McLaren sets, McLaren earbuds and headphones from Bowers & Wilkins, and even McLaren-branded noise-reducing earplugs.
In many cases, these brand licensing deals generate extra revenue for automakers and race teams. F1 racing requires a lot of money to fund, which is why we see these odd pairings from time to time.
The goal is to pair your team’s brand with a prestige company, like how luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer is the Official Partner and Timekeeper of the Red Bull Racing F1 team. When that doesn’t happen, you might wind up with Nutribullet being your team’s Official Blender and Smoothie Machine. We kid, of course, as every company’s money is green and McLaren is ahead of Red Bull this season with two race wins to one. They’re doing something right.
TopSpeed’s Take
The brand partnerships that automakers and racing teams make always tickle us. Lamborghini is on its second branded pickleball paddle. Ferrari and Hot Wheels are back together again. Who knows what company will get in bed with an automotive company next to create the strangest bedfellows yet?
The real question is whether these arguably oddball mashups between seemingly unrelated companies do more harm than good. McLaren is in the business of selling supercars for six and seven figures. Does working with a company that makes plastic blenders dilute the brand’s prestige?
Yes, McLaren’s F1 team is behind this hookup, not its road car business, but it’s all connected. The best case scenario is that this partnership didn’t arise out of the blue, that perhaps Zac Brown is a closet green juice fanatic and can only get the right consistency with a Nutribullet blender. If we were buying a McLaren x Nutribullet blender, we’d choose to believe that was true.
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