da evo uk
early development work is well under way on the 'baby' McLaren, with plans to sell as many as 2000 cars a year to rival the likes of the Ferrari 360 Modena and Lamborghini Gallardo.
Although McLaren engineers are remaining tight-lipped about the project, evo has learnt that feasibility studies are currently being carried out on the car; directors of the company gathered during May to spend a day testing the two Italian supercars on track.
McLaren is hoping to use carbonfibre construction for the new car, although there are doubts about the economic viability of using the material for a car with a projected price tag of about £110,000. One insider suggested that the composite monocoque would have to come in at £3000, factory cost. 'Very, very challenging,' he added.
Sources wouldn't be budged on whether the new car, thought to be codenamed P8, will have a three-seat arrangement similar to that of the F1, but equally our source doggedly refused to confirm the new car as a conventional two-seater. One possibility is that the third seat would be mounted centrally towards the rear, the reverse of the F1's layout. It will be mid-engined though, partly to make it distinct from the front-engined Mercedes SLR McLaren.
Another source told evo that if the car does go ahead, it will probably have to be built by Mercedes, as McLaren's new Woking factory is tied up producing the SLR and doesn't have the spare capacity. HM The Queen officially opened the Norman Foster-designed McLaren Technology Centre last month.
evo has uncovered some of the background to the SLR project. It seems that the SLR, the brainchild of Ron Dennis, was originally designed to be the definitive GT car. Ferrari's 550 Maranello was the original target car for the project but it became clear that the SLR would be in a different league when the first projected performance figures were calculated using the higher- than-expected output from the supercharged Mercedes V8.
Using a combination of a carbonfibre body and front-mounted engine required some interesting design solutions. Running a super-hot exhaust system along the car's underside was impossible as carbon bodies don't like intense heat, so the unusual side-exit exhausts were designed. Packaging the huge silencers around the engine was a significant challenge. The gullwing door design is also a consequence of the layout, as it was necessary to keep the hinges away from the exhaust.
McLaren says that the crash performance of the carbon structure is particularly good. Only the boot's outer lid is made in glassfibre - to enable the antenna and GPS to get a signal. The body is laminated in Portsmouth and sent to Woking where it takes eight days and 200 hours to finish and paint the surface panels. (This is an indication of the expense that could be involved in building the P8 in carbonfibre. The paint costs of the McLaren F1 were also said to be very high.)
Assembling the SLR from a painted shell takes another 80 hours, or around five days on the 80-metre-long assembly line. Around 140 employees will make up to 500 SLRs each year for its planned seven-year life-cycle.
Production of the SLR takes up just 4000sq m of the 22,500sq m plant. The remainder of the space is given over to the F1 team, McLaren Electronic Systems, McLaren Marketing and McLaren Applied Technologies.
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