This is the McLaren Speedtail,
the third member of McLaren's ultimate series
following the P1 and Senna.
It is a 1,036 brake horsepower hybrid hyper-GT
as elegant as the Senna is ugly.
Capable of hitting 250 miles per hour and costing 2.1 million pounds,
and yet the most exciting thing about it isn't anything to do with the numbers.
It's the car whose spirit the Speedtail resurrects.
Truly, I never thought I'd see the day when the McLaren F1's interior layout
was revisited in the modern hyper car,
and yet here I am, sitting centrally in the Speedtail
with quite literally the perfect view out, and a couple of brave mates
can come along for the ride, too.
Truly, McLaren, this is excellent work,
but you don't cash in your McLaren F1 chips
without doing a proper job, which is why this interior is about so much more
than just the number of seats.
Although the seats are actually quite cool.
These two either side of me are built into the carbon-fibre tub,
and mine is built entirely from carbon fibre,
and it's covered in something called directional leather,
basically slippery bits on the side, so you can slide your bum in
and then gritty bits in here to hold you in place
when you're at high speeds.
In front of me, a bank of screens.
In the centre, an instrument cluster,
so the speed, the gear, the amount of revs and various information about the car.
On the left, we have climate control and navigation.
On the right, phone and media, and at the extreme edges,
two more screens and these your feeds
from the wing mirrors.
Now you'll notice an almost complete lack of buttons here.
Apart from up here, where we have a secondary control panel.
Now that's got the active dynamics.
That's where you select drive, neutral, reverse for the gearbox.
It's how you start the engine. It's how you control
the electronic doors and the windows,
and there's a button here that activates something called velocity mode.
Push that and the car hunkers down.
The wing mirrors retract. It changes the hybrid strategy,
so the engine idles a little bit higher and charges the battery up fully
and it won't deploy that boost until you're really, really shifting
to make sure you can access
that 250 mile an hour top speed.
By the way, that's seven miles an hour more than the McLaren F1,
making this officially the fastest car McLaren has ever produced.
And that's not all for tricks on the interior.
You notice I'm almost entirely surrounded by glass,
some of it electrochromatic glass.
Yeah, that means that at the top of the windscreen
and this portal above my head, at the top of the doors
and in the rear quarter windows here,
there's glass that can switch from clear to opaque at the touch of a button.
There's also this stuff:
machined carbon fibre made from layer upon layer of ultra-thin carbon
and then the shape you want is simply machined from that block,
so you're left with these intricate almost wood-like patterns on the paddles,
on the wheel and on the panel above my head.
Pretty fancy stuff, but I know what you're thinking,
"What's it like for passengers?
Cosy.
High speed of course is the real goal here.
Every inch of the Speedtail's exterior is sculpted to reduce drag
and help it slip through the air unimpeded.
Whereas the Senna trades on downforce and ultimate track performance,
function at the expensive of all else, this is the opposite.
It's about elegance, extreme acceleration and that F1-eclipsing top speed.
Firstly, there's the dimensions.
This thing is actually narrower than a P1 but over half a metre longer.
Part of that comes from a slightly longer wheelbase,
but the vast majority is from here, from this massively elongated tail.
All in the name of bleeding the air off gently from the back edge
and reducing turbulence.
McLaren also wanted to reduce the number of shut lines on the Speedtail,
so you'll see this entire rear section, this rear clamshell
that wraps right around the back of the car is a single piece
of carbon fibre.
Talking about reducing shut lines,
you've got hydraulically actuated flaps here.
Now these can pop up to act as air brakes or generally just balance the car
in various driving situations, but you'll notice there's no hinges.
The carbon fibre is just flexible,
keeping the bodywork as smooth and as perfect as possible.
Moving up the car, you may not be able to see it from that angle actually,
but there's a snorkel intake here, split either side of the brake light.
Now that feeds air into the combustion engine there,
but it doesn't stick up into the airflow. It's flush with the bodywork.
That's only possible if you can keep the air perfectly attached all the way
along the car's roof line.
Speaking of roof line,
you've got this gorgeous teardrop-shaped cockpit
and this super smooth glasshouse here,
and here's a nice thing,
a nod to the F1, this small ticket window at the bottom here,
and then we come to the wing mirrors or should we call them
wing cameras in this car here in their outer position,
but they can retract fully into the bodywork,
making the car as slippery as it possibly can be,
and then we get to the wheels:
20-inch wheels at the front, 21 inch at the back.
The carbon ceramic brakes
essentially the same ones as you get on the Senna,
but what you don't get on the Senna is these:
the carbon-fibre aerodynamic wheel covers that reduce the turbulence massively,
that keep the air attached all the way down the significant length of this car.
And there's more because you've got another flap here.
An extension of the bonnet line here that shrouds the windscreen wiper,
again controlling the air, keeping it smooth, flowing tightly,
close to the bodywork right to the very back.
Essentially, this thing cleaves the air like a greased otter,
but low drag is nothing without low weight.
To go with the carbon monocoque is four carbon panels,
keeping the weight to one 1,430 kg dry.
That's just 35 kilograms more than the P1.
Not bad really considering the gadget count,
that extra seat and that tail.
Okay, so you want some numbers.
Well, the truth is I don't have them all... yet.
McLaren is holding back certain things
like full powertrain stats and full performance figures,
but what I can do is make an educated guess,
so we can only assume under there is a version of the four litre twin-turbo V8
from the Senna, producing let's say around 750 horsepower,
and then we have electric motors, and we have battery packs,
and this car will probably do nought to 62 in around 2.5 seconds.
As I say, that's just my take.
The things that we do know for certain is the total power output.
That's 1,036 brake horsepower.
This car will also do nought to 186 miles per hour in 12.8 seconds.
Just going to let that one sink in for a bit.
Need a bit of help? Well, that's a full 3.7 seconds
faster than the P 1 and almost 10 seconds quicker than the McLaren F1,
and that, in a nutshell, is the Speedtail's USP,
and in case you are wondering:
yep, it's eight tenths faster to 186 than a Bugatti Chiron
and it has twice the number of boots.
Not only can you bring an extra passenger,
but there's space for bags in the front and in the back.
Naturally, bespoke luggage to match your unique Speedtail's interior
is available on request,
which brings us to two teeny-weeny hyper car sticking points:
price and availability.
Only 106 of these will ever be made, costing from 2.1 million pounds,
and it's all sold out.
Don't worry about that too much.
What we care about is what this car says about McLaren, the company.
Okay, so it doesn't have a naturally aspirated shrieking V12
like the Aston Martin Valkyrie
or an actual Formula one engine like the Mercedes AMG Project1,
but what it does do is demonstrate a mastery of aerodynamics.
It has one of the very coolest interiors I've ever sat in,
and it has a direct bloodline to the greatest supercar
the world has ever known,
and that, my friends, is something money just can't buy.