Poor speaker placement at the McLaren booth effectively scuttled the long-awaited P1 press conference for those who didn't triangulate on McLaren President/CEO Ron Dennis' gravelly baritone.
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Those who managed to get within in earshot caught the legendary F1 boss and head of McLaren make bold claims about his new supercar's performance. Among the boasts Dennis made about the McLaren P1:
"The P1 will set new benchmarks."
"At 150 mph, it is capable of generating 600 kgs of downforce, which allows for 2+G cornering speeds."
"...with 170 hp of e-power... we are able to completely eliminate turbo lag. It has completely linear power delivery from 0-900hp."
"It's gonna be sub-7-minutes on the Nurburgring Nordschleife."
"I'm a little nervous to say this, but it's going to be the fastest car in the world. That goes for what has come before and what will come after... No one is going to get anywhere near this vehicle..."
To back up these bold claims, Dennis welcomed his new Formula One driver, Mexican Sergio "Checo" Perez, to the stage. Perez took the seat of Lewis Hamilton, who joined Mercedes-Benz's F1 team for the 2013 season. After brief comments on how his F1 testing and training is going ("very good"), Perez was asked to comment on how the P1 drives; apparently, he is one of a handful from Woking to have driven it hard.
"It was amazing! The way it looks, it is beautiful," Perez said. "It's the closest I've been to a Formula 1 car. The way it brakes, the way it handles a corner... It's really a massive car and massive project."
Not completely sold on Perez's glowing appraisal of the car, we chatted with both Frank Stephenson and Paul MacKenzie. Stephenson is Mclaren's outspoken design chief, and he not only thoughtfully confirmed many Dennis' claims, he extended at least one of them into the realm of ridiculousness. When asked to confirm that the P1 will achieve lateral acceleration in excess of 2 Gs, Stephenson said, "At least!" and indicated cornering forces would be much higher.
P1 Program Director MacKenzie was a bit more circumspect, but did make some tantalizing promises:
- Zero to 62 mph in under 3 seconds.
- Zero to 124 mph in under 7 seconds.
- Zero to 180 mph in under 17 seconds.
- But he also stressed that the P1 was not just a straight-line speed freak.
"Our target was to design and build the best driver's car - and that was both on road and track," said MacKenzie. "That was our target; we actually looked back, this back in the late 2009s, at what defines the new McLaren super sports car. Bugatti were out with the Veyron - 1000hp, over 2 tons of weight, incredibly quick, great acceleration, great top speed, but not necessarily a track car. It answered one of the questions [we had]. For us, a super sports car has got to be both; it has got to have the performance, but that performance has got be able to be used on both the road and the track."
Yep, you read that correctly. The goal of the McLaren P1 is to be the world's Best Driver's Car. You can bet we're interested in determining whether the wizards from Woking have achieved their goal. Stay tuned.
I used to go kick tires with my dad at local car dealerships. I was the kid quizzing the sales guys on horsepower and 0-60 times, while Dad wandered around undisturbed. When the salesmen finally cornered him, I'd grab as much of the glossy product literature as I could carry. One that still stands out to this day: the beautiful booklet on the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX that favorably compared it to the Porsches of the era. I would pore over the prose, pictures, specs, trim levels, even the fine print, never once thinking that I might someday be responsible for the asterisked figures "*as tested by Motor Trend magazine." My parents, immigrants from Hong Kong, worked their way from St. Louis, Missouri (where I was born) to sunny Camarillo, California, in the early 1970s. Along the way, Dad managed to get us into some interesting, iconic family vehicles, including a 1973 Super Beetle (first year of the curved windshield!), 1976 Volvo 240, the 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon, and 1984 VW Vanagon. Dad imbued a love of sports cars and fast sedans as well. I remember sitting on the package shelf of his 1981 Mazda RX-7, listening to him explain to my Mom - for Nth time - what made the rotary engine so special. I remember bracing myself for the laggy whoosh of his turbo diesel Mercedes-Benz 300D, and later, his '87 Porsche Turbo. We were a Toyota family in my coming-of-age years. At 15 years and 6 months, I scored 100 percent on my driving license test, behind the wheel of Mom's 1991 Toyota Previa. As a reward, I was handed the keys to my brother's 1986 Celica GT-S. Six months and three speeding tickets later, I was booted off the family insurance policy and into a 1983 Toyota 4x4 (Hilux, baby). It took me through the rest of college and most of my time at USC, where I worked for the Daily Trojan newspaper and graduated with a biology degree and business minor. Cars took a back seat during my stint as a science teacher for Teach for America. I considered a third year of teaching high school science, coaching volleyball, and helping out with the newspaper and yearbook, but after two years of telling teenagers to follow their dreams, when I wasn't following mine, I decided to pursue a career in freelance photography. After starving for 6 months, I was picked up by a tiny tuning magazine in Orange County that was covering "The Fast and the Furious" subculture years before it went mainstream. I went from photographer-for-hire to editor-in-chief in three years, and rewarded myself with a clapped-out 1989 Nissan 240SX. I subsequently picked up a 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser (FJ60) to haul parts and camera gear. Both vehicles took me to a more mainstream car magazine, where I first sipped from the firehose of press cars. Soon after, the Land Cruiser was abandoned. After a short stint there, I became editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Sport Compact Car just after turning 30. My editorial director at the time was some long-haired dude with a funny accent named Angus MacKenzie. After 18 months learning from the best, Angus asked me to join Motor Trend as senior editor. That was in 2007, and I've loved every second ever since.
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