McLaren announces that the next Ultimate Series car – successor to the McLaren F1 and P1 – will be the McLaren W1. Debuts 6 October 2024.
It’s 32 years since the world first got to see the McLaren F1 road car, and although McLaren actually struggled to find buyers for all the 64 road cars they built (the last couple selling for around £400k), it’s since gone on to be recognised as one of, if not the most, impressive car ever built with values now in the tens of millions.
Fast forward to 2012 – 20 years on from the arrival of the F1 – and Mclaren was back with a successor – the McLaren P1 – an almost 1000bhp hybrid hypercar, but this time around it had real competition from similar extreme hypers in the shape of the Porsche 918 and Ferrari LaFerrari as the ‘Holy Trinity’ of hypercars.
Now it’s time to top the P1 with a new hypercar from McLaren which we now know will be revealed on 6 October and be called the McLaren W1, a date marking the 50th anniversary of McLaren winning its first Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship.
We have no real clue how the W1 will look – although it will be properly impactful – and although in this age where car makers seem intent on building EVs with monstrous power McLaren won’t be chasing Rimac in the 2000bhp EV monster game but aiming for a clever V8 Hybrid and much lighter setup to get deep-pocketed petrolheads salivating.
Michael Leiters, CEO McLaren, said:
The McLaren W1 is defined by real supercar principles and is the ultimate expression of a McLaren supercar. Born of our rich racing history and World Championship mindset, W1 pushes the boundaries of performance and is worthy of the ‘1’ name. Like its predecessors, the F1 and McLaren P1™, W1 defines the rulebook of a real supercar.
McLaren ‘1’ Car Video