For Americans of a certain age, the fourth season of Knight Rider blew our minds. That’s when we all saw KITT, the hero car, go from nearly destroyed to newly badass with Super Pursuit Mode. The new McLaren W1 has a very similar trick thanks its cargo of aerodynamic and active surface areas. This is way more than a ducktail spoiler panel sticking up a little further.
The W1 brings 1980s high performance fantasy onto the actual street. Well, probably boulevard, given the locales supercars tend to frequent. McLaren missed its opportunity to call it Super Pursuit Mode, but a lot of stuff happens when you engage Race mode.
Just like KITT, ride height drops, front and rear active wings deploy, and the Active Long Tail extends to enhance the high-performance rear diffuser. Supercars look like they do because of aerodynamic management, and the W1 takes it to new extremes for a road car. There are pronounced channels in the W1 to funnel air through the brakes, over the top of the vehicle, and across the hood into the radiators. The Formula 1 inspired aerodynamics are a highlight of this all-new supercar from McLaren; the motorsports company with a road car side hustle.
Aero rules everything around the W1, according to the company’s press release:
“The new McLaren W1’s striking design is defined by aerodynamic requirements, with McLaren’s engineers focusing on combining the high downforce and low drag that ground-effect innovations provide to the foundations for the new Ultimate McLaren’s extraordinary abilities.
The aerodynamic platform of W1 is the most advanced ever in a McLaren road car, the result of 350 hours of wind tunnel sessions with 5000 points tested.”
The latest road car to carry the “1” designation, the W1 joins the legendary F1 and P1 models. There is a clear style link, especially to the P1 and its comprehensive, obsessive engineering.
The McLaren W1 is basically a ground effect aircraft on road wheels. Instead of getting airborne, though, it’s designed to press itself to the pavement with up to 1000kg of force, a 5X increase from its normal mode. The whole car is built around the “Aerocell” Monocoque.
This is a carbon fiber occupant cell with seats molded in like a carnival ride. Because the seats don’t have to move, McLaren was able to keep the wheelbase shorter in the interest of optimal airflow, it claims. The mid-mounted powertrain is also inclined by three degrees to make the diffuser more effective. For the driver, the pedal box is elevated, and the controls adjust to meet you, including the pedals, steering wheel, and even the cupholder.
The unique anhedral doors are another requirement driven by aero. They’re hinged to the roof of the AeroCell and look cool as hell. They’re designed that way because the bodysides are inspired by F1 side pods and for this car, again, aero is everything.
It also looks distinctively McLaren, which is to say purposeful and evolutionary. The big front extractor – they call it a nostril – and more pronounced haunches give the W1 its own visual identity. It’s busier below the beltline on purpose for all that ground effect management.
Underneath is actually where most of the downforce generation happens, with the company saying:
“Uniquely in W1, much of the downforce is achieved using all of the underbody for ground effect, with this maximised when Race mode is selected.”
The Active Long Tail is a sophisticated part of the whole package.
Actuated by four E-motors and moving up, down, and – depending on whether the W1 is in Road mode or Race mode – also 300mm rearwards and adjusting in pitch, the McLaren Active Long Tail extends the working area of the rear diffuser in Race mode and is key to the generation of downforce. It also operates in DRS and airbrake configurations as required to help optimise aerodynamic balance.
Race Mode is a dramatic transformation. The McLaren Race Active Chassis Control III suspension provides Comfort and Sport settings that will suit everyday circumstances, but when things get serious, so does the W1.
The lowering of ride height – by 37mm at the front and 17mm at the rear – and deployment of active front and rear wings is not just theatre: in Race mode W1 is capable of generating up to 350kg of downforce at the front and 650kg at the rear, giving total downforce of up to 1000kg in high-speed corners.
The active front and rear wings and a roof-mounted air flow diverter W1 are among the most advanced aerodynamic features ever in a road-legal McLaren. The revolutionary McLaren Active Long Tail rear wing – arguably visually the single most dramatic element of the new W1 – is absolutely integral to the aerodynamic performance of the car. McLaren’s first association with a ‘longtail’ name dates back to the 1997 F1 GTR, but in the case of this new Active Long Tail wing it is an essential part of the strategy for management of drag, lift and downforce.
The front suspension is a Formula 1-style setup, operated by pushrod, and tucks right up against the front firewall. McLaren carefully designed the elements with aerodynamic cross-sections, 3D printed parts out of lightweight titanium, and arranged the elements to generate the least disturbance.
McLaren says the placement of the lower wishbones and the inboard dampers were raised to provide a clear channel for airflow.
The hybrid powertrain is the business end of the W1, and its details read like a good 1980s high-tech fantasy. There’s a lot of “E” this and that: 347PS E-module (integrated radial-flux electric motor and control unit), E-differential, and my favorite, E-reverse, which means McLaren saved the weight of a conventional reverse gear in the 8-speed transmission by relying on the electric motor. Less stuff in the gearbox means more room for webbing and strength within the same volume. It’s also fewer things to break, and if you’ve got the electric motor; which is astoundingly light at just 20kg (44 pounds) for the full motor and controller assembly, it can do reverse without gearing.
The whole setup is compact, as you can see from the pictures. The E-module appears to be about the size of a coffee can and plugs into the side of the transmission. It’s a pretty direct example of racing improving the breed. From McLaren:
“Comprising a radial flux E-motor and integrated Motor Control Unit – an engineering approach similar that taken in IndyCar racing – the E-module is a masterclass in maximising efficiency while minimising package volume and weight, The whole unit weighs just 20kg and further advantages include reducing coolant volume, low-voltage and high-voltage connections and seals. The sealed unit improves serviceability with a dry interface outside of the transmission unit.
The E-motor element is capable of spinning up to 24,000rpm, has a specific output of 23PS/kg, which is directly comparable to Formula 1 E-motors.”
The E-module is powered by a 1.384kWh battery, which together with the management unit and power distribution unit is enclosed on a structural carbon fibre floor housed within a cavity in the carbon fibre monocoque, located as low as possible to benefit vehicle centre of gravity.
Hybrids and EVs that get flogged hard on the track can suffer significant battery issues. McLaren has thought of that:
The E-module is powered by a 1.384kWh battery, which is conditioned using second-generation dielectric immersion cooling, transferring heat into the dedicated electric drive cooling circuit through a heat exchanger for increased cooling during sustained track running. The battery, management unit and power distribution unit is enclosed within a fireproof cover and mounted on a structural carbon fibre floor. It is housed within a cavity built into the carbon fibre monocoque – located as low as possible to benefit centre of gravity – and is further shielded from impact by the engine, transmission and rear structure.
The battery cells are also motorsport-derived and specifically designed to prioritise high power outputs to the E-module to increase throttle response and boost overall power.
The combustion heart of the matter is an all-new MHP8 4 liter (3988cc) aluminum twin-turbo V8. While the death knell seems to be sounding across the automotive industry for ICE development, this 9,200 rpm flat-plane crank screamer sings a different tune. Racing experience makes for an impressive engine with plasma-coated cylinder walls, direct injection, and tuned tubular headers with equal-length runners. The twin-scroll turbos work with that absurd 9,200 RPM redline to generate 928PS (about 915 hp. Together with the E-module’s 347PS (about 342 hp), the W1 drives only its rear wheels with a combined 1275PS (1257 hp). McLare kept the front axle unpowered for better steering feel, the same reason engineers say they’ve stuck with hydraulic power steering.
McLaren’s approach does away with a lot of heavy stuff conventional cars carry.
The total weight of hybrid components has been reduced by 40kg compared to the McLaren P1 while delivering almost double the electric power. Further weight is also saved by the reduction of engine ancillaries including the alternator, starter motor and additional pipework required for a conventional HVAC system.
At 1399kg, or roughly 3,084 pounds, what you have here is a car that weighs about the same as an SN95 Mustang with more than five times the power.
Around the Nardo track McLaren uses as a reference, the W1 is three seconds faster than the track-focused Senna, and it promises to be a lot more pleasant on the street. But this is also the fastest-accelerating road-legal McLaren ever. It’ll hurtle to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 2.7 seconds, and you can hit 186 mph in less than 12.7 seconds. Fastest laps and quickest acceleration figures don’t often come together on the same car. As McLaren says:
Hugely impressive in isolation, these two parameters are even more incredible when you consider that you need both high downforce and very low drag to achieve them.
But McLaren thought of more — there’s a Boost button, just like Michael Knight would use. It delivers full E-module power for an extra kick. Pin the aero ears back at the same time with the Aero button to deploy the Drag Reduction System (DRS) mode of the Long Tail for an extra edge to vanquish your rivals. Both of these buttons are a wiggle of the thumb away on the steering wheel.
KITT’s brakes probably ain’t shit compared to the multi-layer carbon ceramic setup on the W1. Forged monobloc calipers; six-piston in front and four-piston at the rear are cooled by F1 style ducts and the carbon ceramic rotors are designed with an extra ceramic layer for more heat capacity. The monobloc calipers give the braking system inherent rigidity, so instead of the hardware flexing, the force goes into clamping the pads into the rotor. McLaren says it’ll stop from 200 km/h in 100 meters (metres). If my Freedom Unit conversion is correct, that’s 325 feet to stop from 120 mph. The company says it takes just 29 meters to stop from 100 km/h. 94.25 feet? Really? Hope you have good neck muscles.
This is a super-adjustable car. Suspension settings include Race and Race+. Race, because some tracks are bumpy, leaves more compliance. Race+ lets you take full advantage of a smoother track surface. Within Race Mode, there are more settings; think of them as the McLaren version of the turtle and the rabbit on your lawnmower. The GP setting is designed for consistency over many laps, while Sprint is the rabbit, designed for single-lap maximum performance. When you’re not overcome by red mist, there are additional suspension settings to tailor the ride for comfort or body control.
As you’d expect from a driver-focused supercar with the capability to drastically change its personality for the track, McLaren made sure that the 117 liters of cargo space would accommodate two racing helmets.
McLaren had “Authentic Theatre” in mind when creating the W1. There are overhead switches so you’ll look badass reaching up to start the vehicle, put it in gear or Race mode, and operate the windows. McLaren clearly doesn’t like waste. The InnoKnit interior fabric is high-performance in its own right, “knit to fit,” so there are no trimmings, infinitely flexible, and super lightweight. It’s draped over audio and visual elements to provide visual drama. Part of that drama appears to be making it look like someone shot up the interior with a paintball gun, but the treatment reduces bezels, grilles, and other frippery that add cost, extra parts, and most importantly in this case, weight.
McLaren Special Operations will design an W1 cabin to fit your supervillain needs, too, of course. Leather, Alcantara, carbon fiber, or other luxury materials are possible, and as part of the design process, you’ll be able to take it for a visualization spin in augmented reality. Automotive pre-viz is an arena where AR really shines, and everyone is using it. It’s so efficient to be able to strap on a headset and “walk” around or “sit” in a vehicle. It also, again, saves costs. That’s important, even when you’re building supercars that cost a bundle. And speed-to-market is improved because it’s a fast way to rule out ideas that definitely won’t work without having to create physical mock-ups.
The W1 is a car that goes fast and will go fast — there are just 399 allocated. McLaren is pretty confident in its car. It comes with a four-year unlimited mileage vehicle warranty and a six-year, 75,000km warranty on the battery, plus a four-year service plan. A pretty great practical detail for a car that’s such a fever dream of capability.
I wonder if McLaren would make one with a Knight Industries voice modulation display on a HUD?
All images: McLaren
Moving away from the signature headlight design of the existing McLaren cars was a mistake imho.
Did you say, “a four-year unlimited mileage warranty”?
Imma daily drive that thing and use it for DoorDash all night long, suckers!
And put it on Turo for eight hour rentals while I sleep!
Yeah, that’s a pretty awesome warranty, isn’t it?
They’re probably counting on most of the owners doing high hundreds of miles per year, not thousands.
Thinking back to the last several road trips I took, there’s only one I recall where all of the roads and highways were in good enough condition not to risk damage to a car like this. With enough money, I guess you don’t have to care.
I’ll be really impressed with technology when I can buy new electric car that can cover 500 to 600 km going from 80 to10% charge for the price of a Corolla Hybrid with the warrany of a Corolla Hybrid that makes the manufacturer money when sold at volume. Now that’s an engineering challenge.
Building faster hypercars is just a matter of throwing money at the problem and then passing on that cost to the hyperrich.
It has 1258 horsepower and literally no one cares. It’s not bedroom poster material either. Still, I’m sure it already sold out, because rich people.
The rest of the car is neat, but – 350hp from that tiny electric engine? That’s incredible. I don’t know what kind of other supporting gear is necessary, but I’d love to see that make its way into an actual lightweight electric – 350 is more than enough for an actual fun enthusiast car.
Although I get it, kg is mass, N is force.
If McLaren can build this, why not use their knowledge to build something that’s actually useful.. like super efficient trains, innovative renewable power sources, space stations… I mean anything expect for just another super car.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclaren-to-use-f1-technology-in-improving-heathrow-airport/3220037/
just a heads up to people. Motorsport.com has NSFW advertisements, lol
Oh cool. Another hypercar for the 1% to mothball and use as a dick measuring device. There’s a ton of cool engineering here, but I just can’t be bothered to care. No offense to you at all Dan, this is a great article. I’m just numb to this stuff.
I was thinking the same thing. All that great engineering to putter around Monaco at 5mph. Lame.
Like I said on LinkedIn: I don’t always dig supercars…
This is a pretty impressive vehicle, though; McLarens on the whole tend to be like that. I was in college when the F1 dropped and it was like some kind of spacecraft.
These days, a 3,000-pound *anything* is an achievement. The fact that THIS is 3,000 pounds is completely bonkers.
McLaren also has an extremely high percentage of owners who track their cars, far more than other exotics. I think the number of these put away as investments will be relatively low.
Use it up!
“Like I said on LinkedIn:…”
Cool guy alert ????
Isn’t LinkedIn for nerds?
It’s all good but is it only me, or is it ugly AF?
A step backwards
Imagine some dingus taps the rear of your W1 in traffic. The stuff of nightmares.
Rather, you open a wing door into something stationary. That door, with all the aero venting, looks to be about two feet thick.
Very lovely, but IMO completely pointless. Where can this machine be driven at anything higher than 5% of it’s capability. Cruising the Boulevard and dangling the owners bank account is probably 95% of the intent of the car, the form and function are wasted.
Just because you don’t know where the tracks are doesn’t mean no one knows.
I see all sorts of exotics and plebian cars at the three tracks local to me. But I think you missed my point.
Anybody else notice how all the aero stuff on KITT isn’t visible out the back of the car when Michael is shown in that clip?
I mean, everyone KNOWS how critical continuity was back in 80’s TV, right?
I’m sorry, I was distracted by the halfway decent job they did making the sped-up footage of the car-bys not look really weird. The S-10 in the last shot of it gives it away, though; it bounces like a Civic with two coils sawzalled out of the springs.
When can I expect this in FH5 or GT7? Cuz I could never afford one irl and I desperately want one.
I was reading and checking off all the hypercar boxes when I came upon the most outstanding feature: 3000 lbs. WTF? Well done McLaren.
I’m confident that a McMurtry Speirling would defeat this on the track in a race, and on the street as a daily with better efficiency/reduced energy consumption.
But at least this thing isn’t another 4,000+ lb lardass. For the size this car is and all the features, its mass is actually respectable. It’s dimensionally a huge car…
Of course the Speirling would be faster around a race track, but I don’t think most people want a team of people to get them in and out of a daily street car.
A perfectly streetable car of similar size and performance is possible. Such a thing made with mass produced readily available components could arguably be done for cheap, compared to the Speirling’s outrageous price tag, which is less outrageous than this McLaren W1.
I’d love to democratize hypercar performance by making an affordable/practical vehicle of such for the masses, priced at the low end as far as new cars go(< $25k). Mass production is one of the prerequisites to making this possible. I think even if the market doesn’t exist for it in the present, by the mere existence of such a vehicle, demand soon would come into its own as people saw what was possible.
I mean – the Miata or 86 are basically what you’re talking about (just without the speed and aero).
The Miata and 86 could both stand to lose a few hundred pounds, shrink the width and height a little bit, have a better focus on aero streamlining to cut drag in half, and then have larger, more powerful engines shoved in(at minimum, a 3.0L inline-6, but preferably a V8).
As someone that dailys a 1st year BRZ, the last thing I would want is less weight and more NVH. I dented my rocker panel just by leaning on it its so thin
This is the best P1 follow-up we could have asked for. The Porsche Mission X missed the mark, Ferrari has yet to announce their competitor. This is how you bring F1 tech to the road, unlike the Mercedes Project 1 which has an unfathomably expensive and finnicky powertrain.
EV Hypercars aren’t ready yet, and the market is reflecting that. Give us the F1 level aero and hybrid tech, with an engaging V8, and hydraulic steering. Regardless of price, this W1 is a complete homerun for McLaren.
My favorite detail is that they called out the “dry interface” of the E-module to the transaxle, basically saying “this thing is easy to swap. We thought about service”
Wow, all that tech will make Tavarish’s inevitable rebuild of one that was lost in a volcanic eruption quite challenging.
Somehow the price wasn’t mentioned..? Only $2.6 million, so place your orders quick!!
That works out to just a billion dollars of revenue when multiplied across 399 cars. Pretty budget-efficient if they can make this whole program work for that level of return.
If you have to ask….
If this truly is a ground effect car I wonder how it will ride at high speed. The suspension would need to be hard as a rock to manage ride height.
It’ll ride like a race car at high speeds, because hypothetically you’ll only be doing those speeds on a racetrack.
That said, a McLaren 750S or Artura Spider at 150 mph on a public road is remarkably comfortable. Do not ask me how I know.
Hey – KITT also became a hard top convertible at that time too! Touché, McLaren!
What an incredible machine!
It amazes me sometimes how much of the technology from Knight Rider that has become commonplace today.
Reading through the Knight Rider synopsis, it’s kinda like a proto-Avengers, but more campy.
Not really. Are you sure you’re reading about the right Knight Rider? What you describe sounds a bit more like the spin-off Team Knight Rider.
I think I meant Ironman – FLAG, Knight Industries, exotic materials, a shadowy wealthy technocrat, etc.
OK, I can see that. Iron Man comics came waaaaay before 1982, though, so it’s really the other way around.
Fair – I was thinking MCU Iron Man, specifically. I guess it’s just a common set of tropes that underpin that kind of story. And the fact that all of these kinds of shows were made by Glen Larson or Steven J. Cannell
Yeah, what’s with the orange overspray?
But does it have mr feeny talking to me?