The first five McLaren road cars

McLaren is currently manufacturing some of the fastest and most amazing cars on the planet, but it's the first five cars in the company that have truly been revolutionary. So today we are looking at the first five cars.

M6GT

The GT was developed to be a closed-cockpit version of the successful Can-Am M6A car that will be used at Le Mans and homologated for FIA Group 4 regulation. However, the approval never took place and only a handful of M6GTs were built before McLaren abandoned the project. .

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After abandoning the race car project, Bruce McLaren converted two cars on the road, one of which he kept for himself, with a long-time dream of building a sports car on the road. continue with, but not for a while after the M6GT.

F1

Twenty-five years after the M6GT, McLaren unveiled its next road car and shaken the world's belief in what it was possible to achieve with a legal road vehicle.

F1 was a revolution in every sense of the word, from the central position of the driver's seat to the hallucinating performance, every millimeter of the F1 was designed (by the incredible spirit of Gordon Murray) to do one thing – go very far, very quickly indeed.

Even though his 3.7 second time between 0 and 100 km / h was (and, let's face it, is still) extremely fast, the real impact of the McLaren F1 is reinforced by the fact that 20 years later it remains the fastest naturally aspirated car on the market. planet.

Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren

McLaren's next breakthrough in the road car market comes five years after the end of F1 production with the appearance of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren in 2003, a collaboration with its engine supplier of Formula 1 to l & # 39; era.

Built by McLaren, the SLR was a breathtaking and remarkable car, but its ultimate expression did not appear until the end with the striking and impressive tribute paid to a legendary racing driver, the SLR Stirling Moss.

Abandoning unnecessary subtleties like a roof and a windshield, the Stirling Moss was the last in the range. Even though McLaren produced a limited number of models of the McLaren Edition a little later, she used the cars of existing customers.

MP4-12C

In 2011, McLaren's first all-designed road car landed as the 12C. Previous McLaren all used outboard engine suppliers, while the 12C was the first time McLaren built its own engine for its own car. And what a motor it was too.

The 3.8-liter M838T is a twin turbocharged V8 producing 441 kW of power and 600 Nm of torque at 12C. Since then, he has been even more successful in many McLaren hypercars.

But more importantly, the 12C was the car that showed the traditional supercars that McLaren could face them with joy and was not limited to niche hypercars.

P1

When the car was largely considered the successor to F1 (although McLaren has since said that the Speedtail was actually the "official" successor to the F1) first appeared in 2013, it was not a big success. This was the first time that McLaren was producing two road cars at the same time, with the 12C being produced alongside it until 2014, when it was replaced by the 650S.

The P1 shared the 12C's carbon fiber monocoque and added an electric hybrid system to the 3.8-liter V8 (with combined power of 673 kW and 980 Nm) for face-casting performance, starting a formula Platform sharing / engine / extreme adjustment company produces 7 cars today.