No one made more of a fuss at the 2016 L.A. Auto Show while revealing less than McLaren. Keeping most of a big news project under wraps, the elite British automaker out of Woking announced a new, three-seat and bespoke vehicle emerging from its McLaren Special Operations division.
McLaren is calling this new BP23 the world’s first “Hyper-GT” and limited the production run to 106 units — the same number the automaker built of its legendary F1. At the time of its introduction, the F1 was the fastest production car ever built. We’ll see if the Hyper GT can make the same boast.
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From the outline design McLaren released (above), the BP23 will offer a single forward driver’s seat for the man in charge of the ride. Two passenger seats sit in the back offer room for the people who wish they were driving. If this elite machine is built like so many other cars of its ilk, those back seats might be just large enough to hold an action figure and are tucked in back there for legal reasons. That seat arrangement is also similar to the F1.
The three-person cockpit rests inside a carbon fiber body. An as yet to be identified hybrid powertrain will carry the burden of breaking McLaren’s speed records.
The car will arrive in 2019 after bespoke ordering. As for how much the machine will cost, it doesn’t really matter to the market. Every single car McLaren will build has been bespoke-created, sold and locked down. The rest of us are out of luck.