McLaren MP4-12C: Carbon-Fiber Sailfish

Various examples of the Ferrari 458 Italia have been showing up here since New Year’s, and the appearance of the McLaren reminded us that the British supercar is priced at $231,400, where it competes against the midengine sports car from Italy. Unlike the McLaren F1 and Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, the MP4-12C is not a $1 million trinket. This is supposed to be a real car for real people. (Well, real people who are rich, rather than really rich people.)

A look at the bare chassis showed us that the building blocks of the car are pretty simple. You have a twin-turbo 3.8-liter V8, some aluminum framework to locate the engine and rear suspension, and a plastic tub where the people sit. It looks very prosaic at first, and there were plenty of people who commented about it.

  Some remarked that the hollow aluminum framework looked like a bridge truss. Some noted that the twin airflow meters on the side of the V8’s intake plenum took them back to GM’s Rochester fuel injection of the early 1960s. Some wondered about the engine’s heritage, as Ricardo adapted the engine from MCT (Menard Competition Technologies), which was once the British arm of the Menards race engine shop in Indiana, which itself was the former shop of Tom Walkinshaw Racing, which took over the Infiniti Indy V8 in 2000. 

At the same time, the thing that makes the MP4-12C exotic is the way it’s made, not the pieces themselves. The carbon-fiber tub is the poster child for McLaren’s technology, as new processes make carbon-fiber far quicker and cheaper to manufacture. It’s the plastic that makes it possible to build a McLaren supercar that doesn’t cost a million dollars.

  McLaren designer Frank Stephenson was also in town. Brought in as the shape of the MP4-12C already had been finalized, Stephenson has done what he can to make the car more attractive, but he prefers to talk about the future evolution he’s working on.

In fact Stephenson has been inspired by stuffed sailfish now mounted in the McLaren design studio. During a vacation in the Caribbean, he became fascinated with the sailfish and its ability to swim seemingly effortlessly at 70 mph. He bought a mounted example in Florida and had it shipped to the UK. Once it arrived (the crate was enormous, he says), he gave it a carbon-fiber sail and then painted it in the distinctive silver, orange and chrome livery of the McLaren Formula 1 team, complete with racing numbers where the eyes used to be.

For Stephenson, the sailfish is a metaphor for the aerodynamic efficiency to which the new car should aspire. He tells us that the sailfish has a textured skin that helps to create an envelope of air around the fish that reduces friction and makes its sustained speed of 70 ph possible. After looking closer at the skin’s triangular scales of the skin itself, which creates the vortices that produce this envelope of air, Stephenson has adapted the shape to the ductwork of the new car, where it speeds up airflow and reduces drag.

Plastic and a carbon-fiber sailfish. Who says this is just another supercar from just another boutique car company?

Michael Jordan, Executive Editor, Edmunds.com                 

Previously: 2012 McLaren MP4-12C suspension walkaround.  

Found on Youtube: