“Our aim is 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.”
McLaren Automotive will show a concept of what it is calling the next generation ultimate supercar later this month. The P1 will be at the center of the McLaren stand at its first big league auto show, the Paris Motor Show or Mondial de l’Automobile 2012. The British company says the car is only a design study, next year a production version will be revealed and go on sale.
“P1 will be the result of 50 years of racing and road car heritage,” claims McLaren Automotive Executive Chairman Ron Dennis. “Twenty years ago we raised the supercar performance bar with the McLaren F1 and our goal with P1 is to redefine it once again.”
The expansion of the super car product line comes after the introduction of the McLaren 12C spider at Pebble Beach in August. This 616 horsepower sports car is blisteringly fast at 10.8 -second ¼-mile elapsed time or 0.2-seconds slower than the lighter coupe, with 0-60 mph and 0-100 mph times equal to the coupe’s.
The latest McLaren is a sleek, well-finished sports car, with good outward visibility and reasonable room inside – a rarity – for this type of conveyance. At $265,750 plus $2,500 delivery (plus any customization), it will also be as rare, but likely not as rare as the P1, which will be positioned above the 12C and 12C spider, in terms of both price and performance.
“Our aim is 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,” says McLaren Automotive Managing Director Antony Sheriff. “It is the true test of a supercar’s all round ability and a much more important technical statement. It will be the most exciting, most capable, most technologically advanced and most dynamically accomplished supercar ever made.”
Like Ferrari, McLaren has a strong winning record in Formula One, the mega-buck racing series that pursues technology at all costs. McLaren can boast to be the original producer of carbon fiber sports cars. In 1981, McLaren introduced a carbon fiber monocoque chassis in Formula 1 with the launch of the MP4/1 racecar. A decade later, the McLaren F1 introduced the advanced composite technology to road cars – only 106 were produced.
