2023 Mclaren Artura Performance on 2040-cars

Auto blog

More than half of new McLarens will be hybrids by 2022

McLaren has an ambitious growth plan. After building just 1,654 cars in 2015, CEO Mike Flewitt expects the Woking, UK,-based company to churn out 3,000 units in 2016, but doubling production is only the start. Flewitt predicts that figure will swell to 4,500 to 5,000 annually, which "is about capacity," for the company's production facility, he told Automotive News Europe. The increase in production is key to a revenue-driven research-and-development effort that will allow the company to create 15 new products and introduce "a completely new powertrain architecture ... specifically designed for a hybridized application," Flewitt said. "In the latter part of this business plan to 2022, more than half our cars will be hybrids," Flewitt told ANE. "This second powertrain will run in parallel to the eight cylinder we have today and will have hybrid technology integrated into it from day one." This new model would arrive near the end of the decade, Flewitt said, but unlike the company's current and only hybrid, the P1, it won't be a plug-in hybrid. Related Video:

Fernando Alonso drives Senna's McLaren in latest promo clip

McLaren has put a lot of great drivers in the cockpit over the years. Several multiple World Champions in fact, from Ayrton Senna to Fernando Alonso. It may seem only fitting then that the latter should get a chance to sample the former's ride, and that's just what the team has done for this latest promo video. It's actually the trailer for a new clip called Don't Crack Under Pressure, celebrating 30 years of partnership between McLaren and TAG Heuer, filmed at Catalunya (Spain). Which is all well and fine, but the point is: Alonso, in Senna's car, the MP4/4 in which Senna won his first World Championship in 1988. And he's playing cat and mouse, no less, with Jenson Button in the new MP4-30, which is powered once again by Honda. Just like in the Senna days.

McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray creates his own car company

Famed automotive designer Gordon Murray has announced he's launching a new vehicle manufacturing company that will focus on taking innovative car designs into limited-run production. Gordon Murray Automotive says its first car will be a flagship model launched under a new brand that it says will go against the trend toward more complicated, heavier-weight vehicles. Murray is the South African-born automotive engineer and designer of the McLaren F1 who more recently was working on the T.27, a tiny electric city three-seater. The new company is positioned as part of a corporate organization and a sister company to Gordon Murray Design. "The new manufacturing business significantly expands the capabilities of our group of companies," Murray said. "With our first new car, we will demonstrate a return to the design and engineering principles that have made the McLaren F1 such an icon." Murray said its cars will be built on a new version of its highly efficient iStream manufacturing process, which derives heavily from Formula One construction and materials technologies to make low-weight vehicles that require less energy and less factory space to produce. It describes the process thusly: "An iStream chassis is essentially a hybrid structure consisting of a metallic frame (iFrame) and composite sandwich panels (iPanels). The basic concept is to use the iFrame to form a basic skeleton to locate all the local attachment points such as powertrain, steering, suspension and occupant seats etc. The iFrame alone does not meet the performance demands of a modern car, so we then stabilise the iFrame by bonding the highly rigid (iPanels) onto the metallic members so they then act as very stiff shear panels." The process was used on the TVR sports car, which Murray's firm said was as much as 300 kilograms (660 pounds) lighter than others in its class: Murray designed F1 cars that won more than 50 grands prix. Like Lotus, he is obsessed with weight reduction, and has recently worked on small-car projects like the Yamaha Sports Ride Concept. Autocar says Murray aims to keep the cost of his new vehicles low through use of the iStream process, and has said his ideal supercar would weigh less than 2,000 pounds. Whether that's the flagship he speaks of remains to be seen.