A car Tron might love - if he could afford one. A tease of the new McLaren P12.
McLaren has made the bold promise to roll out a new car every year for the foreseeable future and now that the Spider version of the original MP4-12C has made its debut it’s time to move on. Company officials are now confirming they’ll roll out an all-new flagship at the upcoming Paris Motor Show, and this Tron-like image gives us a sense of what’s apparently in store.
The McLaren P12 is being billed as the “spiritual successor” to the legendary McLaren F1, a supercar that routinely collects winning bids of as much as $3.5 million on the classic auction circuit. While the new flagship won’t be quite so expensive, it could nudge into seven figures, company insiders hint, or roughly four times as much as the current MP4 coupe.
One thing’s for certain, the P12 will continue McLaren’s tradition of relying on super-strong and ultra-light carbon fiber for the monocoque and other key components. The British maker has gotten increasingly good at that process, slashing the time it takes to produce carbon fiber parts and pieces.
The P12 is expected to rely on McLaren’s current 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-8 powertrain. It seems likely the maker will find a way to squeeze out significantly more than the MP4’s 616 horsepower – possibly as much as 800, according to some reports..
The maker has been working with a kinetic energy storage system similar to what has been used on the Formula One circuit. Known as KERS, that is distinctly different from conventional hybrids in that waste energy is recaptured by a spinning flywheel rather than stored in a battery. The advantage is that this power can be tapped in an instant, almost like firing up afterburners. The downside is that there’s usually only a few seconds of boost before the flywheel spins down.
We’d like to offer still more detail about the design but the images McLaren has supplied leaves even more to the imagination than the light bikes from the Tron movies. The supercar maker will only say that a video teaser “shows trails of light travelling over a seemingly invisible form, with the airflow creating a dynamic shape with dramatic visual effect.”
One big difference from the old F1 is that the McLaren P12 will feature only two seats, rather than the old supercar’s three – with the driver in the middle.
The new McLaren offering will debut on September 27 in Paris.