McLaren Automotive, which revealed its new MP4-12C supercar on Wednesday has announced more details of its product range over the next five years.
McLaren MP4-12C
(MP4 is the chassis designation for every F1 McLaren car, 12 refers to McLaren’s own performance index and C stands for carbon). “We’re building a car company with something coming out every 10 months or so”, Antony Sheriff, the Managing Director, said. “That won’t mean a brand new model every 10 months; it indicates a series of variations on perhaps two or three sports cars, plus we know that McLaren plans a hypercar at some point, too.”
When the 12C is launched, McLaren hopes to have 30 to 40 dealers in place, and the company is currently working on a warranty system.
The talk about the unrivalled performance and handling for the 12C continues. Due to McLaren’s prodigious use of its F1 simulator and computer wizzardry, the 12C should “work right out of the box”, according to Sheriff, with no need for mules and prototypes, because the simulator can report back so precisely on performance, handling and balance.
The whole process of building the car goes simply from raw data, to the simulator, to the design of the car. A new “pro-active” suspension system does away with the need for anti-roll bars.
The result is, according to Sheriff, “The best-handling car by a stretch in its class” and a car with “more driving satisfaction than any other car in its segment.”
As for quality and reliabilty, a promising indicator is the appointment of a former Toyota employee as production director.
I’m really excited about the developments over at McLaren.
It’s great how manufacturers take racing data and apply whatever they learn to consumer cars. McLaren’s system must be saving them millions of dollars since it takes the expensive and time consuming guess work out of their process.
Let’s hope that their system saves them billions and billions of dollars that they decide to mass produce their cars to the point that regular folks can afford them.
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