P11 caught on video during winter testing
McLaren will launch its competitor to the Ferrari 430 and Lamborghini Gallardo in 2011 with a pledge to be more exclusive and exotic than both its rivals.
Ron Dennis briefly revealed his new P11 supercar in the flesh to journalists at a briefing this morning – an event primarily aimed at launching the new McLaren Automotive division which will build the road cars. Sadly no pictures of the new supercar were allowed.
The new mid-engined P11, which closely resembles ‘spy’ images already run in the UK automotive press will be built at a new factory on one of McLaren’s existing properties in the Woking area. Dennis will be executive chairman of McLaren Automotive following his recent withdrawal from F1 team operations, and McLaren Automotive has also engaged Cable and Wireless chairman Richard Lapthorne – a personal friend of Dennis – as non-executive chairman. The division aims to employ between 500 and 800 staff when it gets to full capacity around 2015.
Details of the new P11 remain scarce, although it has already been reported it will get Mercedes V8 power.
Is this McLaren's new supercar?
Speaking at today’s launch the managing director of McLaren Automotive Antony Sheriff said full details of the new P11 will be announced in the coming months, but that we should expect a range of technological innovations that will ensure the McLaren is a leader in its field.
‘If our goal was to build a car like a Ferrari there wouldn’t be any point doing this,’ he said. ‘Our approach will be fundamentally different – it’s about getting the most out of all the ingredients, so as well as phenomenal performance you should expect remarkable efficiency and safety.’
‘Everything we do is driven by reason, and the shape of our car is not so much dictated by the style we want, but by the performance envelope,’ says Sheriff. ‘That doesn’t just mean the top speed, it’s about downforce, the aerodynamics and even the interior space - everything that goes towards making a great car that owners will be able to love driving and enjoy for a very long time. In fact this car has been designed more from the inside out than any other project I have been involved with.’
According to Sheriff, the P11 nomenclature will not be carried over to production – it is simply an internal project number in a series that started with P1, otherwise known as the McLaren F1. ‘The name is the least of our worries at the moment,’ he quipped. ‘Deciding that will take about as long as tooling up the badges!’
McLaren Automotive expects to build 1000 P11s annually, but there are a range of other models on the way and the Group says it ultimately plans to build 4000 cars per year.
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According to Ron Dennis, development of the P11 has been underway for two years and two dozen prototypes have already been built. ‘We have already nominated most of our suppliers, and the project is far more advanced than people think,’ he says. ‘Even our distribution network has started to take shape over the last couple of months, and now our engineers are ready to spend two years focusing entirely on making sure the car is ready for its 2011 launch.
The McLaren Automotive group project has stemmed from Dennis’s desire to grow the brand, and with Credit Suisse he is looking for investors to pump £250m into the newly standalone business in exchange for 48 per cent of the Automotive Group’s equity. ‘With this investment we can double the value of McLaren in three to five years, something that simply wouldn’t be possible solely as a race team,’ he says.
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