McLaren planning affordable Porsche 911 turbo rival

They said the same thing about Tesla...

Check your pulse if the name McLaren doesn't give you the chills, but it's still very, very early and the Turbo has 30-odd years of drool-inducing and neck-snapping under it's belt. That's a pretty ambitious benchmark to shoot for. Best of luck McLaren.

And please, nobody derail this thread into a GT-R based rant. I can see it now..."But Nissan built a car that beats the bag out of the Turbo already and it's only the first year of it and they haven't even built the Spec-V yet and it's the best supercar ever in existence and nothing can touch it"...

Flame on!

— jpighetti (View Profile)

Posted on 10/29/2008 5:28:56 PM | | Votes: -1   

Agree with mmeecc. When McLaren came out with the F1, it was ahead of all the other supercars & stayed there for a long while. Only the Veyron tops the F1 speed, but those who had the chance to drive both still refer to the F1 as the best supercar.

— Lecsucks (View Profile)

Posted on 10/29/2008 6:44:24 PM | | Votes: 0   

That's fair...

Except the F1 was the only car they produced and it was ALMOST A MILLION DOLLARS and they built just over 60 of them!!!!

In the mid 90's:

Ferrari F50 - @$500,000
Lamborghini Diablo - @$275,000
Jag XJ220 - @$600,000, and a failure
Bugatti EB110SS - @$350,000
Pagani Zonda - @$320,000, debut in '99

Nobody considered the F1 as competition, and it certainly didn't steal any business from any supercar manufacturer.

They weren't competing against anything except wind resistance. It was an exercise in "what can we do if money is no object?".

Sooo...

All I'm saying is, aside form motorsports, McLaren went from basically a one-off manufacturer of an unbelievable car 10 years ago, to a co-sponsor of the SLR (lowest competitively rated "supercar" in recent history), to entering the most competitive sports car segment with the most other offerings.

Sure, the F1 is a legend, and if they could build a new F1 for under $150,000, there wouldn't be anything to talk about. But does 1/7 the MSRP equal 1/7th the car? Sure it would probably be less expensive to build the same car today due to reduced production costs for the super advanced (at the time) materials used in it. So why hasn't anyone done it yet?

It also doesn't say anything about the Turbo specifically in the article. Just that they are "supposedly looking at an affordable coupe to throw into the Porsche 911 segment mix".

— jpighetti (View Profile)

Posted on 10/29/2008 7:26:24 PM | | Votes: 3   

An exciting proposition but with McClaren ending its relation ship with MB (excepting AMG powerplants) where are they going to sell and service these things? Remember, the reason Porsche has been so successful these past years is that they make an awesome sports car that you can take to work everyday and get the oil changed when you need to.

— 993Turbo (View Profile)

Posted on 10/30/2008 6:42:35 AM | | Votes: 1