The upcoming baby McLaren, the car known within the company as the P13, is a car with an uncertain set of rivals. It will be priced in between the Porsche 911 GT3 and the Ferrari 458, but has been benchmarked against the former, a car that has impressed the Woking engineers and their boss, Mike Flewitt.
When talking to PistonHeads, he exclaimed that, “the GT3 is one of the most impressive new cars I’ve driven. I was genuinely astonished at how accomplished that car is.”
It turns out that the British firm bought a GT3 for P13 benchmarking purposes (which they too had to send back as part of the known recall) because they not only approved of way it drove, but also what it stands for and the fact that it’s more practical than your average sports car.
Flewitt explained that what they want to bring out with the new line of McLaren cars is that they are “less of a fashion statement than Ferrari and Lamborghini,” so closer in philosophy to the engineering-centric Germans. “Porsche is the brand we have the most conquests from. People who know and understand Porsche can relate to what we do in terms of technology,” he said.
The final version of the P13 is expected to be unveiled at next year’s Geneva motor show, sporting a P1 face, 650S carbon tub, the same 3.8-liter V8 but in detuned form and the promise of excellent usability and practicality credentials.
By Andrei Nedelea
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