Yahoo Autos McLaren Is Reportedly Working on a 700-hp, Non-Hybrid, Three-Seat F1-Successor
A McLaren insider has told British magazine Autocar something wonderful: McLaren is working on a road-focused hypercar set for 2018, which is considered to be a successor to the F1. How is it a successor to the F1, exactly? Well, it'll inherit some of its features such as a three-seater cabin and suspension settings that are kind to your body on a cross-continental journey. They say McLaren's twin-turbo 3.8 V8 will be tuned to deliver over 700 horsepower without an additional hybrid system, making this a 200+mph gran turismo (a hyper GT, if you will) instead of a track-special such as the P1 GTR.
McLaren says they 'don't comment on speculation stories such as the one in this week's issue of Autocar magazine,' but while we must take this with a huge grain of salt, here's why making a new F1 seems like a logical step forward for the brand:
McLaren Special Operations built 375 P1s, and when those were done, they got busy with the track-only P1 GTRs, offered exclusively to P1 owners at first. Only 35 GTRs were planned, but the demand was so high that they ended up selling 50. Parallel to getting those ready, MSO also had to build 500 normal and 25 Carbon Series 675LTs, only to switch to 675LT Spider production afterwards, because McLaren decided to sell 500 of those as well at £285,450 a pop. Who could blame them?
When the last one of those LT Spiders rolls out of Woking, McLaren Special Operations will have the capacity to build a brand new model after producing six chassis for the Lanzante P1 LMs and a few of those limited edition Sport- and Super Series cars that are bound to happen every year. Think 650S Can Am:
When it comes to the next Ultimate Series McLaren, the company is in no rush to launch a successor to the P1. At this point, they are even toying with the idea of making that an all-electric hypercar, something that could go around the track faster than a P1 GTR while being kind to mother nature.
That would leave space for a different Ultimate Series car, something that they could refer to as the successor to the F1. Such would be an all carbon hyper GT designed without thinking about track times, with a practical and completely personalized three-seater cabin, sufficient luggage space, an active suspension set up for comfort and a powerful and light drivetrain that still gives this unique product a better power-to-weight ratio than something from the Super Series.
Such a car would follow the concept of the 570GT while costing ten times more, offering the exact opposite of what Red Bull is cooking up with Aston Martin at the moment, and something F1 designer Gordon Murray would approve of, given it's designed without compromise and is fast enough, of course. We're willing to bet it will be, because McLaren doesn't do slow.
Just to put it out there: the original McLaren F1 is a 243mph car from 1992.
