Speedtail Images

[Macboy]

It would seem from these leaked official images that Mclaren's designers were flicking through 1990s CAR magazines and found the XJ220 before the F1 as a exterior inspiration. Much to like inside but there are some design elements that just don't look right to me (tail proportions, pinched headlights, wheel disks?).



Full image set here: https://www.carscoops.com/2018/10/new-mclaren-spee...

[Macboy]

The more I look the more ECO-car it looks. Like the VW XL-1 it looks aero for economy not speed. Is it the wheel disks or is the colour/spec just wrong for the car (like the early Senna pictures?). They don’t seem to do noses well - the lights are such oddities (I’m a 720s headlight hater I confess). I’m so confused. Early 2000s Olds concept car meets XL-1?

[Macboy]

Impressive performance figures in the first official article I read but can it really be 5.2m long? That’s as long as a 7-series and almost a metre longer than an F1. Surely that’s a typo...?

[Macboy]

justin220 said:

Absolutely love that after viewing it a good few times.

Wasn't sure on initial looking, but those last pictures look great.

Performance is unreal!

I'm literally the polar opposite. The more I look at it the more awful it gets. There's just so many things to dislike about the exterior, overall and in detail. It's retro-futurism justified by aerodynamicists not actual homogenous design. The brutalism of the Senna looks better and better each time I look at this (and I don't much care for that design either).

[Macboy]

flemke said:

5.2m is correct.

You missed the tone sadly. I said it with a raised eyebrow. The car is a foot longer than my 5 series touring and 3 feet longer than an F1. It's just comically long.

[Macboy]

Beefmeister said:

The thing I don’t really get is that the entire focus of the car is to be their fastest, so the aero is all about the top speed and has driven the whole design. But relatively speaking it’s not that fast.

So it’s all about being a ‘Hyper GT’ then? Okay great, you can seat three, but where’s the luggage space? There was loads on the F1.

Confused project.

..and how is this a car for everyday/town driving when it's that low, that wide and that looooooooong? Even with cameras, it's not exactly going to be the easiest thing to park or manoeuvre. I just keep thinking of the video of the Veyron backing into the La Ferrari in London.

[Macboy]

EddieSteadyGo said:

Personally I think the wheel covers are key part of the design.

It's designed with an objective in mind, and they don't give a fk how it looks. Many of the best designs are like this - requiring the user to change their preconceptions.

DB7 was launched with wheel disks that looked like a solid alloys but were essentially posh hubcaps. Many owners hated them and took them off leaving the centre hub and wheels nuts exposed which promptly rusted. Aston Martin produced a smaller hubcap to cover just the wheel nuts (to stop complaints and warranty claims) and this became the "new" wheel for the Dunhill edition and beyond. The wheel had always been a spoked design but was intended to be mostly hidden. Customer perception was largely that it looked terrible and the company was forced to abandon it. Far from chaning preconceptions, there was a rapid backtrack despite this being core to the design.

Now, that was pure aesthetics and not for airflow but functionality will absolutely not stop customers removing it or, as they have with P1 and will with Sennas, taking off the OE wheels and fitting others they see as more appropriate, airflow be damned.

I'll be honest, however clever it is in Woking engineers' minds, to me the wheel cover looks like an Audi A5 space-saver - all it lacks is the 50kph max sticker and yellow rim.

[Macboy]

EddieSteadyGo said:

As you say, the objective for the DB7 wheels was aesthetics, so to my thinking that isn't really applicable.

I wonder if there would be some benefit from fitting a similar design on the rear wheels.

FWIW, I think Mclaren are pursing the right engineering strategy. Explore each performance niche, trying to excel, taking the design where the performance objectives dictates.

What I'm saying is, regardless of function or aesthetics you're not going to change the way people look at the car and how they view the disks (regardless of coaxing/"education" from Mclaren. Your point was people need to change their viewpoint and accept that different wheels front to back is the new normal (for this car). My point is to owners, ugly is ugly. If they don't like the look (and many won't) they will take the disks off or change the wheels. Simple.