By Miles Downard
The Geneva motor show is under way in Switzerland. The annual extravaganza always brings out the biggest and best news manufacturer’s wish to be in the public realm. Something that caught my eye this week was a talk by McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt in which he announced an update to the BP23 project.
That stands for ‘Bespoke Project 2: 3 seats’ in case it wasn’t obvious. It’s the code name for the company’s new flagship hypercar. It’ll have a 3 seat layout, in what I imagined would be a recreation of the iconic McLaren F1. However Mike was quick to rule the successor title as out of the question. It will also be the fastest McLaren ever, like the F1 at the time. And be the most powerful, once again like the F1 but definitely not the successor. A hommage perhaps.
“It will be the most powerful, most advanced hybrid powertrain we’ve ever done, inside a low-drag, super aero-efficient body: BP23 will be the fastest car we’ve ever made,” he said.
The McLaren P1 currently runs a hybrid system capable of 677kW. So there’s the target of course. More than that seems like pure lunacy, but who am I to judge. What seems more crazy than anything else in the project is that the BP23 isn’t even a track car, but rather a luxury hyper car. So what all that power is for I’m not sure.
Interior will be all new and nothing like we’ve seen before thanks to the central driving position.
“We have already built a rough interior buck out of bits of wood,” Flewitt says, “and it feels a really special position to sit.”
The first BP23 customer will take delivery in 2019 at a cost of £1.65m. There will be just 106 in all – no spiders, no special editions, this is it (it just so happens that only 106 F1’s were built)
