A new McLaren is coming and it promises to be the most exciting road-going car in the company's history.
British supercar company McLaren might be giving this year's LA Auto Show a miss, but the news that it has today begun work on what it calls the world's first 鈥楬yper GT' is bound to get as much coverage as any model actually appearing at the West Coast event.
The car is currently codenamed the BP23 because it is the company's second Bespoke Project and because it will feature a three-seat arrangement. And even though the first customer won't start until 2019, the first official information about the project, revealed on Wednesday, is enough to make it the most exciting ever to roll out of the company's space-age U.K. headquarters.
"It's a car designed for longer journeys, but with the high levels of performance and driver engagement expected of any McLaren," explained CEO Mike Flewitt of the decision to call the car a Hyper-GT. "[It] will also deliver the highest levels of refinement, enabling significant journeys to be undertaken with up to three people aboard," he added.
But don't think that this enhanced refinement will mean the car is for cruising across continents rather than cruising to lap records. Instead it should be seen as a modern-day interpretation of the original McLaren F1 hypercar which, between 1992 and 2005 when the Bugatti Veyron arrived, was the world's fastest production car.
"BP23 will borrow the three-seat layout with the central driving position made famous by the iconic McLaren F1, and it will be housed in a streamlined, shrink-wrapped carbon fiber body of great elegance," said Flewitt. "A hybrid powertrain will make it one of the most powerful McLarens yet created."
The only current car in the McLaren lineup with a hybrid powertrain is the P1 and it offers its 375 lucky owners (all models have already sold out) 904bhp, 980NM of torque, can accelerate from 0-100km/h in just 2.8 seconds and, even with the engine's limiter in place, can achieve speeds of over 352km/h (219mph).
Therefore, BP23 will better all of these figures while offering an extra seat and more luggage space. However, one area where the P1 will beat it is production numbers. BP23 is strictly limited to just 106 examples (just like the original McLaren F1) and, according to Flewitt, each one has already found a home.
