McLaren's new car assault

McLaren’s MP4-12C marks the beginning of a new model lineup the company says will extend to seven or more new models over the next five or six years. The company is proving quick off the mark, too: hot on the heels of the 12C, its first own-branded road car since 1991’s F1, the company has announced a GT3 racing version.

The GT3 goes to market in the UK with a price tag of £310,000 ($475K) – nearly twice the £168,000 ($257K) of the standard version launched here this week – and a list of expressions exceeding the initial 20-unit production batch by a factor of five. The extra spend buys a vehicle that has about as much in common with the ‘vanilla’ 12C as a V8 Supercar has in common with a street Commodore. More about that shortly.

The company has confirmed 1700 orders for the road-going 12C worldwide, of which 20 hail from Australia. The 12C and the track-only GT3 spearhead what Ian Gorsuch, the company’s regional director for the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, says might reach a seven-model lineup in the next few years. He describes the 12C as the ‘core’ model – the first to come to market using what he says will be the company’s signature configuration: two seats, mid-mounted engine in a carbon fibre tub with hydraulic suspension.

He’s coy about where it goes from here, save to say the 12C will spawn three models directly (of the which the GT3 is the first), while new models to come using the same chassis will lower the line-up’s floor and raise the ceiling. “In terms of its usability, this a very flexible chassis, so it’s economically viable for us, even as a very small company, to spread it across a wide tract of market sectors,” he told Carsales Network.

Eventually more road models will arrive, starting downmarket from the $500K-plus, Ferrari 458-hunting 12C and working up to something in the $1 million-plus league of the radical F1 of the 1990s. Gorsuch says the company hasn’t forgotten how it feels to own the title of maker of the world’s fastest, most technologically advanced road car. “We’ve had the halo for 20 years, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we’ll eventually want to reassert our position there.” He will not be drawn beyond that.

However, the company is making its intentions clear in deed if not in word. This northern spring (that’s around now), McLaren Automotive will open the doors to the all-new £40m McLaren Production Centre (MPC) nextdoor to its headquarters in Woking, about 40km south-west of London.

Designed by noted architect Norman Foster’s company, the facility will manage to put out about 1000 12Cs for the global market this year. But that’s while it’s still in the sorting-out out phase. The production figure is expected to ramp up to 4000 vehicles per annum over the next 5-6 years.

Gorsuch says the company remains cautious about making promises about lead times for the time being. “At this point we’re still working out what we can supply. We’re not going into China at the moment, or Russia, because we simply don’t have enough cars to satisfy those markets, so we’ll get there later.”

The order book is already full enough to have the facility working to capacity well into 2012. Deliveries will begin next month; Australian arrivals will begin in October or November.

GT3 cars will not come out of Woking but from partner CRS Racing’s facility in Leicestershire, under the auspices of a new specialty company called McLaren GT, formed with input from McLaren’s Racing and Automotive divisions and CRS. The car uses the 12C’s 75kg ‘MonoCell’ chassis, but with track-spec brake and suspension components.  Racing series rules mean the GT3 forgoes the road car’s ProActive Chassis Control system in favour of regulation roll bars and race-spec dampers.

It uses the same 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 but tuned to race specification, reducing output to 368kw from the road car’s 441kW. In place of the 12C’s seven-speed DCT is a Ricardo-supplied six-cog sequential unit which alone cuts 80kg off the car’s weight. The GT3 gets all-new electricals developed in-house, a new Bosch-made ABS. Its race series-compliant aerodynamics include a new front splitter, door blade, rear wing, diffuser and louvres in the front fenders.

After next year’s consignment, about 20 more GT3s will come on stream in 2013, and the same again in 2014. Asked about cars for other racing series and, McLaren and CRS told UK press in statements that they’re ‘open-minded and optimistic’ about the idea.

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