After weeks of teasing, McLaren Automotive has unveiled a new hypercar to take on the mantle of their first ever road car, the McLaren F1. The McLaren P1 has one simple goal: to be the best driver’s car in the world on road and track.
Executive Chairman Ron Dennis said, “Twenty years McLaren we raised the performance bar for supercars with the McLaren F1. Our goal with the McLaren P1 is to redefine it once again”.
In just over a week at the Paris Motor Show, McLaren will showcase their design study for the P1, capturing all of the technological and spiritual inspiration from the company’s racing into an all-dominant road car.
With its 800-960bhp powerplant and sub-1300kg kerb weight, the P1 will run rings around a Bugatti Veyron on the track.Autocar magazine was provided with some exclusive insights about the P1, which you can read about on their website.
They say the P1 is likely to retail for £800,000, although most of the initial cars will already be pre-sold. Sitting on a similar footprint to the 12C, the P1 is said to be shorter than a current Porsche 911 and weigh less than 1300kg. The magazine also said the P1 has already shattered the lap-record for a road-legal car around Silverstone circuit, although it’s not clear which circuit configuration this would have been.
Managing Director Antony Sherriff, laid out his vision for the McLaren P1 “To make the most exciting, most capable, most technologically advanced and most dynamically accomplished supercar ever made – not necessarily to be the fastest in absolute top speed but to be the quickest and most rewarding series production road car on a circuit.”
While Chairman Ron Dennis pointed towards the technological and spiritual inspiration gained from the company’s F1 team – “..The McLaren P1 will be the result of 50 years of racing and road car heritage.”
We understand the P1 will limited to just 500 units and built around the same carbon fibre ‘MonoCell’ structure as the 12C and powered by the same 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8, but using a new flywheel-assisted turbo mechanism to deliver higher levels of boost, while capturing and deploying energy using an F1-derived KERS device.
The McLaren P1 will be the most dynamically accomplished supercar ever made – not necessarily the fastest in top speed, but the quickest and most rewarding production road car on a circuit.
The end result is said to eliminate turbo lag and deliver fluid gear changes when combined with McLaren’s bespoke Seamless Shift Gearbox (SSG). Power is said to rise from the 626bhp of the 12C to around 800bhp, which will be further enhanced by the 160bhp delivered by its electric motor, which will be fed via KERS and used in short accelerative bursts (as is done in F1).
The full picture will be revealed next Thursday, 27 September. In the meantime, take a look at the images on this page and let your imagination run riot.
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