McLaren's fastest ever supercar has an official name!
Ever since McLaren stunned the world in 1993 with their world-beating F1 supercar, the brand has named cars with increasingly ambiguous alphanumeric acronyms. Even their forthcoming hypercar has been touted as the BP23, which stands for “Bespoke Project 2, 3-Seater” since its first teasers hit the web.
Now, in a swooshy, abstract video, the English automaker has revealed the name of the highest-performing car they’ve ever made: it will be known as the Speedtail. (Sure, the McLaren Senna doesn’t count as an alphanumeric name like the 720S or MP4-12C, but in this case, the exception proves the rule.)
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McLaren’s website touts the Speedtail as a “Hyper-GT” sports car, and from the sweeping design cues they’ve hinted at, to the mid-mounted driver’s seat, to Top Gear’s BP23 prototype test run, the car seems poised to live up to the hype. That three-seat layout hearkens back to the F1, which stole the record for world’s fastest car in 1998 with a speed of 240.1 miles per hour.
McLaren claims the Speedtail, thanks to improved aerodynamics, will reach 243 miles per hour, the fastest for any of their exceedingly impressive models. Like the groundbreaking F1, only 106 examples will ever be built — and all of them were claimed by pre-orders before the car’s original announcement.
Design sketches released thus far focus extensively on the car’s profile and aero functions. All 106 future owners even received an intricate desk sculpture that adds further abstractions to the Speedtail’s potential form, highlighting the radical shapes and construction methods that will define and enable the car’s performance. The 7.9-pound pieces each took 100 hours to build—mainly out of metal and featuring plenty of carbon fiber details—including up to 30 hours of polishing. Each is numbered from one to 106, matching the chassis number of the owner’s future acquisition.
Exact specs for the Speedtail have yet to be revealed, as McLaren didn’t even inform Top Gear any engine stats for the car they test drove, nor did they share any details about a potential four-wheel drivetrain, nor was the possibility of the increasingly popular hybrid gasoline-electric motor setup discussed. All that can be reasonably inferred is that all 106 owners will see the car before its official debut — which McLaren has, in fact, promised will happen sometime later this year.