McLaren MP4-12C production delays

An embarrassed McLaren has been forced to hold back the delivery of more than 200 of its all-new MP4-12C supercars at its English headquarters because of electrical and computer software problems.

The software problem, which also affects more than 100 of the twin-turbo V8 machines McLaren has already delivered, is still being worked on at the company’s Woking offices, and officials have confirmed that a fix is still at least a week away.

“We are holding deliveries now because there has been a software upgrade,” McLaren Sales and Marketing Director, Greg Levine confirmed. “It is still a week away and we want to test it first, then check those results before flashing it into the new cars.

“It makes no sense to send them out to customers now and then have to reflash them when we have fixed the issues and our customers understand that.”

While that strategy will work for the growing collection of pre-sold 12Cs that McLaren is accumulating at its new manufacturing facility in Woking, the nascent carmaker is refusing to officially recall the cars that are already in customer hands.

While McLaren figurehead Ron Dennis has written to owners and expectant customers of the 330km/h supercar offering an apology and a copy of a new coffee table book McLaren: The Wins.

In the letter, Dennis confided that the “early software bugs” had caused issues with; “unnecessarily sensitive warning lights, battery drainage in certain conditions and IRIS performance issues.”

Dennis’s letter to customers clearly hopes to turn a negative into a positive, though, and asks customers to bring their cars back to their dealers and hopes: “the way we deal with these issues sets us apart and is to the standard you would expect from McLaren.”

McLaren has also denied industry rumours that the software issue was involved in two crashed 12Cs, featured on the eye-watering website crashedexotics.com.

“It’s not a safety issue, so there’s no need for a recall,” Levine insisted. “We have just over 100 cars out there now and they are mostly in the UK, so we can get to them without a recall anyway,” he said.

“In the future we will be able to flash the cars remotely for things like this, but now we have to physically go to the car with a USB key.”

However, a software overhaul isn’t the only teething problem McLaren has had with its new car.

“The biggest problem we have had has been drain on the battery, and that started with the door latches getting water in them, which set off various sensors and that started an electrical issue,” Levine admitted.

“So some customers have perceived it as an electrical issue, but it’s a door latch issue we inherited from our supplier and we have resolved it.”

There have also been cases of 12Cs breaking their windows when their owners closed or opened the doors, but Levine confirmed this related to the battery drainage disabling the electric motors that would normally crack the windows partly open.

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