Woking, England - This, says McLaren, is the fastest car it has ever built, but rather than pitching it as a no-compromise race car for the road, the Speedtail was instead designed to be a ‘Hyper-GT’, as the Woking-based supercar maker puts it.
Only 106 of these will ever be built, at a lofty £1.75 million (R32.9m) excluding taxes.
It also marks a return to the legendary F1 supercar’s three-seat cockpit layout that puts the driver at the centre, but first let’s get to the juicy bits.
The Speedtail is powered by a “pioneering” but as yet unspecified petrol-electric hybrid powertrain that produces 772kW, allowing a claimed top speed of 403km/h and a 0-300km/h acceleration time of just 12.8 seconds.
Thanks to an ultra lightweight carbon fibre monocage body structure the Speedtail weighs just 1430kg, but that’s not the only secret to its performance potential. Its teardrop-shaped cabin, dramatically elongated body and active aerodynamics make it the most aero-drag efficient McLaren road car ever.
Designed to be luxurious as well as dynamically extreme, the McLaren flagship also has some nifty cabin features, like a camera system that replaces the door mirrors and electrochromic glass that darkens top of the windscreen to effectively make sun visors redundant.