Yesterday we had the video confirming that McLaren’s new hypercar would be unveiled on October 6th; today, it has announced the name: W1. According to its maker, it was chosen to celebrate ‘McLaren’s World Championship mindset’ and the car’s public reveal next weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the race team winning its first F1 Constructors’ title.
W1 was included in a handful of possible names trademarked by the firm in recent months (U1 and MP1 among them) and, whatever the nature of the new model underneath, you can be sure of never forgetting it. Why? Because whatever you think of McLaren’s lineup since 2010, the cars with a ‘1’ in the name tend to be fairly special. And very few and far between.
Obviously we have the F1 to thank for that, a car so unprecedented in its pursuit of technical perfection that it laid down many of the defining aspects of what we think about when asked to consider a car that goes beyond ‘super’. It was so uncompromising and legend-making, that McLaren Automotive agonised over how best to pay homage to it two decades later. But even allowing for the ‘spiritual’ nature of its succession, the P1 did a fine job capturing the essence of what a hypercar should be in the hybrid age. Take it from us, no one who has driven one in anger was left in any doubt about its claim to the ‘1’ in its name.
McLaren, you can be sure, will be aiming for nothing less with the W1. The Senna and the Speedtail, the manufacturer’s defining Ultimate Series cars since the P1, showed that it could do single-minded, tip-of-the-spear stuff as well as anyone – but it will surely attempt to cover more bases with a car that has to ‘absolutely be the pinnacle of McLaren DNA’. Quite what form it will take isn’t yet known, though having spoken to CEO Michael Leiters earlier in the summer, it is certainly conceivable that the W1 will feature some variation of the hybridised V8 that McLaren has been working on – but the extent to which it has further embraced electrical power is a tantalisingly open question.
“The McLaren W1 is defined by real supercar principles and is the ultimate expression of a McLaren supercar,” noted Leiters in an accompanying statement. “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.”
Apart from the CEO’s well-known views on kerbweight (he was impressively emphatic when telling us, “for me, a supercar that weighs two tonnes is no supercar”), it will be fascinating to see what McLaren thinks constitutes ‘the rulebook’ in an age when pure combustion, hybrid and all-electric options co-exist – especially if it is serious about setting ‘the standard for a generation’ as both its microsite and its teaser video suggest it is. For now, and in light of the impossibly high pedigree of the cars that preceded the W1, only one thing is certain: it’ll be worth tuning in at lunchtime next Sunday to find out.
