A small rant on McLarens lack of design change
The new wave of McLaren supercars only started in 2011 and already we’ve been bombarded with too many new models to keep track of, all of which look roughly the same. The Surrey-based manufacturer has ended their production dormancy and erupted with a flurry of expertly engineered, extremely fast and very similar-looking sports/super cars. They’re great cars, but isn’t there just a bit too much resemblance?
Too many P1 clones
When the P1 was revealed at the 2012 Paris Motor Show it ignited a fire in the hearts of many. The car looked amazing and it offered something fresh – a change of pace from the expected top-dog supercar manufacturers like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Pagani or Bugatti. It was used on the cover of Forza 5 on Xbox, as well as pretty much every car magazine that month.
Jeremy Clarkson drove it around Spa and described it as “a gamechanger, a genuinely new chapter in the history of motoring”. Well, it seems McLaren have been rewriting the very same “chapter” for the past 5 years.
The 650S, 570GT, 675LT, 600LT and 540C are ALL P1 clones. There, I said it.
All the cars look the same, all the names do too.
Forget giving supercars interesting names, why do that when you can just use numbers and letters? This is basically McLaren admitting that they know that all of their cars look the same. After all, it would be silly to give unique names to a group of cars that are less varied than Mark Zuckerberg’s wardrobe.
Apart from the Senna and the upcoming “Speedtail”, the rest of the line up sounds as varied as it looks…not very.
Spot the difference
Remember the “spot the difference” sections you’d get in magazines? Well that’s basically what McLaren have recreated and it takes place every time you visit their showroom in Knightsbridge. The Senna is easily distinguishable and the 720S has a different grille and headlights but that’s where the creativity ends.
Compare the product range to that of Lamborghini or Ferrari and it becomes clear why naysayers like myself find it easy to nitpick at the British supercar makers for lack of variety.
With all that said, all of McLaren’s cars are undeniably beautiful and stupidly quick. Despite them all looking roughly the same, we’re all still here anticipating what they’ll release next. The Speedtail is set to be unveiled on October 26 this year and only 106 units are to be produced. It’ll be the fastest McLaren to date with a 0-62mph time of roughly 2 seconds and a top speed of 243 mph.
We’ll be covering the Speedtail and its release so if you want to keep up to date with the latest, you can subscribe to our email list!
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