Bad news, as it turns out that BMW and McLaren aren’t cooking something after all.

Rumors and speculations in the motoring industry occur every day, with a great deal of them turning out to be completely…false. Unfortunately, the BMW-McLaren alleged partnership – which we covered a few days ago sourced from a Car Magazine report, was debunked by BMW M Boss, Frank van Meel.

In an interview with Motoring, van Meel stated that the concept was “pure fantasy”, saying: “I haven’t had a phone call, Harald Krüger hasn’t had a phone call and Klaus Fröhlich hasn’t had a phone call. We haven’t made one, either, and we don’t have plans to.”

Of course, both Krüger and Fröhlich are high profile representatives of the German car maker, one being BMW’s CEO and the other BMW’s Research and Development director.

Moreover, after the large amount of money invested in the i8 Project, BMW doesn’t seem eager to obstruct the model’s ‘halo’ position in its line-up, as Frank van Meel continued stating:

“We admire McLaren and we have obviously worked with them in the past, but there is nothing on the agenda. The halo car of the entire BMW brand is the i8 and a lot of money and engineering has been invested in it. It will remain the only halo for its lifecycle. It would make no sense for us to put a car above the i8, or even priced near it, that would have the same sort of layout but more power.”

So, it seems that as long as the i8 will exist, BMW’s won’t even think to come up with another mid-engined supercar. Still, when the time comes to construct another “halo-car”, the German car manufacturer seems perfectly capable to do it on its own, without McLaren’s help or expertise, as BMW M Boss concluded:

“I don’t understand why we would need to work with McLaren for a supercar anyway. All of the technologies the story suggested are technologies that are core competences here at BMW and at M. Nobody in the world is more advanced with carbon-fibre than we are. We have shown how strong we are with electric boosting for performance and efficiency, plus we still have a great V8 engine here. What would we need McLaren to do for us?”

BMW 3.0 CSL Hommage pictured

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