Thirty units. After exposing the concept-car at the last Pebble Beach concours, McLaren has decided to sell a limited edition of their dazzling orange and black car. The fans can go crazy as much as they want because the Can-Am Edition will be almost fully reproduced, and this means an astonishing performance under many aspects. The pictures will show what made this car so adored by everyone since the mentioned North-American event, and what will certainly build its way to increase the super sports cars’ history.
McLaren has always been distinguished from the rival automakers about their focus when building a high-performance car. Since they are a competition constructor who also builds street cars, the differences start when remembering that MP4-12C is only their second street car, succeeding only F1 and SLR, but this one being projected in partnership with Mercedes-Benz. So they don’t have to worry with maintaining a fashion image such as Ferrari or Porsche, following a strong visual identity like Mercedes-Benz or even with sharing another cars’ projects because the brand belongs to a big group, like Lamborghini. It’s undeniable that the English car seen at these pictures is as expensive as those brands’ sports cars, but McLaren Automotive can take advantage from this lack of strings to deliver a different perspective of this kind of car. That’s what they made with F1 in the 1990s, which not only kept the Fastest Production car record for many years as also stills surprise the world by construction exclusivities, such as the central driving position, with two occupants travelling behind the driver. This car’s successor doesn’t bring creative innovations like that, but represents the best of today’s technology when it comes to driving performance.
The Can-Am edition honors Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme taking inspiration from the GT3 competition version. It means that this car uses lots of carbon fiber parts, not only in visual parts such as the rearview mirrors but specially at the structural ones, like hood, side radiator and the big rear airfoil: that size comes to generate 30% bigger downforce. This car shares MP4 coupe and roadster’s chassis but received special track wheels, while the huge changes to the exhaust system illustrates how big are the differences under the hood: the twin-turbo 3.8 V8 received a special configuration to deliver 638 hp, making this MP4 the most powerful one ever made. Actually, this car is so powerful that it was decided to keep it away from the streets: as FIA has licensed it only to tracks, they will receive a car with behavior optimized to them: the race car steering wheel is only the first part of a complete competition-like cabin: there are small side windows and special Recaro seats, with much better body support. This car is expected to hit the customers’ garages (unfortunately not the streets) in next March, under the price of 375.000 euros.