We’ll meet the successor to McLaren’s flagship hypercar, the W1, on October 6.
It’s been more than three decades since McLaren launched the legendary F1 and nearly a decade (how time flies) since the ultra-modern P1 went out of production. Now, after the likes of the Senna, the Elva and the Speedtail, McLaren is bringing out a follow-up beyond what we’ve already seen from the brand’s ‘Ultimate Series’ supercars. The McLaren W1, as we’ll soon know it, is set to debut at 1 PM British summer time on October 6. (Across the pond, that translates to 5 AM Pacific and 8 AM Eastern).
So what can we expect? From the ever-so-brief glimpse the automaker gave with its “What Makes a ‘1’ Car?” this week, we can at the very least expect something along the same lines as the W1’s predecessor in terms of technical prowess and sheer capability, what with the design and prominent aerodynamic features. The video itself, while featuring a lot of exciting rhetoric about being “special” and “one-of-a-kind”, McLaren is light on actual details of what we can expect in a little over a week.
That’s not terribly surprising, as it’s an industry-standard move to evoke huge amounts of hype with a drip-drip-drip of small details here, or blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glances there. Going off what we can see and hear so far, McLaren seems confident the W1 will be as much of a game-changer as its two forebears, and that’s why it’s worthy of the ‘1’ name.
What we are able to guess at, on pretty good authority, are two certainties based on McLaren’s history and its current sports car lineup. Namely, it will pack an electrified powertrain — after all, the P1 more or less got that ball rolling as far as the company’s road cars are concerned — and that it will most likely pack a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 at its core. Now, whether we’ll see even more power than the Speedtail’s 1,036 horsepower is unclear. It may be that this car takes more of a “light is right” approach, as the F1 and the P1 did, and focus less on outright grunt and more on nailing a perfect power-to-weight ratio, on top of implementing mind-bending technology (at a seven-figure premium, of course).
We’ll have more details come October 6, so stay tuned.
