McLaren is working on a new addition to its flagship Ultimate Series range, and Wednesday we received the first details from the company along with a teaser shot of the car’s exhaust tips.
The new car, code-named the P15, is a separate model to the upcoming F1 successor, itself code-named the BP23.
Whereas the BP23 is all about grand touring, the P15 will be McLaren’s most track-oriented road car to date. We’ve heard it will be the fastest, too, eclipsing the speed of even the P1 hypercar.
Since it will be road legal, it won’t be quite as extreme as another Ultimate Series member, the track-only P1 GTR, but McLaren says the design will still be “brutal.” The company describes the P15 as the purest expression yet of its form follows function philosophy. It seems that all measures of daily usability will be sacrificed in favor of track performance.
The P15 will make its debut in early 2018, suggesting an appearance at next March’s Geneva Motor Show. More details, including the final name, will be announced later this year. Sadly, if you were waiting to know about availability, you’re too late. All build slots have been sold.
A spokeswoman for McLaren didn't offer many details about the car's future in the U.S. but said that it would be road legal in the States. The U.S. is still McLaren's largest market for cars, but it's unclear how many of the P15s will make their way across the pond. Roughly 30 percent of the upcoming BP23 cars were sold to U.S., and we expect that's true for the P15.
Following this year’s launch of the 720S, the P15 will be the next arrival in McLaren’s Track22 business plan which calls for 15 new cars or derivatives to be introduced by 2022. Half of these will be hybrids, with the first of the gasoline-electric models expected to be the BP23 arriving in 2019.
