Car Moon

We have already seen Fifth Gear’s Tiff Needell and Jason Plato pit the new McLaren MP4-12C against the Ferrari 458. Now, it’s time for BBC’s Top Gear TV hosts and in particular, Jeremy Clarkson and the Stig to get behind the wheel of McLaren’s finest and try it on the show's test track.

At Top Gear's famous power lap, the MP4 12C recorded an amazing time of just 1:16.2 minutes, which puts it in second place right behind the insane Ariel Atom V8 (1:15.1) and in front of some of the world’s fastest supercars such as the Bugatti Veyron S (1:16.8”), the Gumpert Apollo (1:17.1”) and most importantly, Ferrari’s rivaling 458 Italia (1:19.1”).

The MP4-12C GT3, McLaren’s first race car outside of Formula 1 since the legendary F1 GTR, will make its debut in front of the public at this weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. Based on the new MP4-12C, the GT3 will appear in a revised form after McLaren’s team further honed the supercar. Read more »

The 458 Italia, Ferrari's V8 supercar, is the default choice in its category. Sexy, with a fabulous design and the latest in automotive technology, it is a pure driver’s car to be enjoyed by anyone who can afford it.

Yet McLaren plans to spoil Ferrari’s party claiming that its own brand-new supercar, the MP4-12C, can beat it. On paper, little separates them. But the question for car fanatics remains: which one is better?

To find out, Channel 5's Fifth Gear presenters Tiff Needell and Jason Plato decided to pit the Ferrari against its new challenger from Britain. Their verdict? To find out, just follow the jump and watch the video…

After Lotus, Italian supercar makers have another British contender challenging their supremacy. McLaren is the most successful team in Formula 1 after Ferrari, and yesterday opened its first dealership in the most prestigious part of London.

According to a news report from Bloomberg, the British automaker has much broader plans: its managing director, Antony Sheriff, revealed in an interview that McLaren Automotive intends to spend as much as $1 billion in developing and marketing costs to launch 13 new models and variants in the following years to challenge the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini.

McLaren Automotive will inaugurate a new flagship showroom at One Hyde Park, London, on June 21. And this is just the first of a network of 35 dealerships in 19 countries: Birmingham, London and Manchester in the UK, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich in Germany, Brussels in Benelux, Monaco and Paris in France, Milan in Italy, Madrid in Spain and Zurich in Switzerland. Read more »

In a couple of weeks, BBC will begin airing the 17th season of its highly popular Top Gear TV series. To get our engines running, the media channel released the first promotional trailer of the new series teasing the new automotive adventures of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

The 30 second-long trailer kicks off with Clarkson driving the all-new McLaren MP4-12C on the wet and continues with Hammond in the passenger seat of a MINI WRC racer. Oh, and there’s also a scene with an odd looking red truck...obliterating an Alfa Romeo 156 sedan and a Renault Megane saloon. For the rest, follow the break to watch the trailer

McLaren has announced full technical specifications of its MP4-12C GT3 racing model, which much surprisingly, has 100 horses less than the road car it's based upon. The racer uses the same 3.8-liter twin turbo V8 engine (codenamed M838T), but in a de-tuned state deliver 500 horsepower (down from 600HP) in order to “provide optimum power for a performance-balanced race car,” according to McLaren. Read more »

Even before McLaren released the final specifications on the brand-new MP4-12C, we knew that the British firm's supercar was fast, but if we are to believe this video that mysteriously popped up on Youtube, then the MP4-12C has a serious speed edge over some of its most famed rivals - at least in a straight line race. The video shows the McLaren MP4-12C clearly beating both the Ferrari 458 Italia and the Porsche 911 Turbo MkII [997] in a drag race believed to have taken place at the Portimao Circuit in Portugal. You can watch the short clip along with a couple more fresh videos released by McLaren right after the jump.

McLaren Automotive's brand new MP4-12C has reached another milestone with the start of production at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, England. The British sports car maker said it plans to build up to 1,000 examples of the MP4-12Cs this year, with most cars to be manufactured in a bespoke new £40m McLaren Production Centre, which is due for completion in May on a site neighboring the MTC facility.

McLaren and TAG Heuer are celebrating their 26-year long partnership as well as the 20th anniversary of the original McLaren F1 with the launch of the limited edition TAG Heuer MP4-12C Chronograph watch. Taking inspiration from the upcoming MP4-12C supercar, the watch boasts a matching color scheme and is built from exotic materials such as carbon fiber.

Twelve years after the last six McLaren F1 GTR “Longtails” hit the tarmac at Le Mans, the British supercar maker and CRS Racing have begun work on an MP4-12C-based GT3 racecar. According to the plan that was revealed today, the MP4-12C GT3 will be available in limited numbers starting from 2012.

McLaren Automotive has announced pricing for its upcoming and much hyped new supercar, the MP4-12C, which goes on sale in the UK and Europe in spring 2011. In Britain, on-the-road prices will start at £168,500, while the supercar will cost €200,000 in Germany, €201,000 in France and Monaco, €201,680 in Italy and €203,360 in Belgium, with all prices including country-specific tax. Pricing in other countries will be released at a later date.

While everyone's waiting for the new Gran Turismo, Need for Speed hopes to satiate your digital racing needs with a new Hot Pursuit game. Check out the screen shots below for some copped-out speed machines. Dare you view the Viper and forever live in fear of what could one day be lurking on an interstate? Hey, cops impound craziness all the time.

Seeing as how everyone from Techart and Brabus to Ford and the holy Lamborghini have created awesome police concepts or actual cars, how about McLaren spends a little of its hard-earned cash and builds an MP4-12C patrol car. Can we say crowd-pleaser?

The upcoming McLaren MP4-12C will make its first public outing at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which takes place from Thursday 1- Sunday 4 July 2010. Event goers and enthusiasts alike will also get the chance to see McLaren's new supercar in action as reigning F1 champion Jenson Button and 2008 F1 champion Lewis Hamilton will drive the MP4-12C up Goodwood Hill on Saturday and Sunday respectively in the Supercar Run

The brand-new MP4-12C supercar from McLaren Automotive will be sold next spring (2011) by a network of dealers in 35 cities in 19 countries across the world, with more to follow in 2012, the British company announced.

McLaren Automotive's initial network will include eight retailers in North America (USA, Canada), 12 in Europe (UK, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland), two in the Middle-East, and one in Africa (South Africa).

McLaren chairman Ron Dennis does NOT like Bugatti's Veyron. No really, he utterly hates it. For example, he recently call Bugatti's Veyron a "piece of junk", saying it only beat McLaren's F1 in the famous Abu Dhabi Top Gear race after ten tries.

Dennis vented a bunch in an interview with Arabian Business, and his actual words are decidedly more entertaining than mine.

"The Bugatti Veyron is a complete piece of junk. I think it is. I believe I can look at a range of women and I can see beauty in most of them, but I can look at a Bugatti and I think it is pig ugly."

"The Veyron doesn't do anything for me. I've been looking at it for years, and I don't see one single thing that makes me feel good."

Set to be let loose upon the public come Spring 2011, McLaren Automotive's MP4-12C has a lot to live up to. In order to make sure attention hasn't been waning, McLaren recently had the car's public unveiling at its HQ in Woking, England, where the maker released more details on the MP4-12C including the supercar's performance stats.

The 12C (as they refer to it) packs a mid-mounted 3.8 liter V8, developed in-house by McLaren. Thanks to the twin turbos, it develops 600-horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque.

According to the McLaren, the supercar is capable of reaching 100km/h (62mph) in less than 3,0 seconds and 200 km/h (124mph) in under 10 seconds while completing the quarter mile in around 11 seconds and reaching a top speed in excess of 200mph or 322km/h.

Continuing its series of short films on the development of the all-new MP4-12C, McLaren has released a second video of the latest Experimental Prototype (XP) 12Cs undergoing intensive testing in Spain's Applus IDIADA facility. Featured in the film are the XP8 and XP10 Beta-phase prototypes.

According to McLaren, the key differences between the first XP and these XP Beta cars concern the revised M838T twin-turbo V8 engine, upgraded transmission featuring new gear ratios, a more efficient cooling package, new suspension geometry and upgraded electrical architecture.

McLaren Automotive has released a new video entitled "Inside McLaren: developing the MP4-12C" that shows the 2009 development (XP) prototypes of the mid-engined supercar on road and track in England and Germany, and extreme hot weather testing in Bahrain, as well as a rare company footage and insight that reveal McLaren's plans, processes and challenges.

Only time will tell if the styling of the new McLaren MP4-12C will age well and look relevant years later, as the firm's chief designer Frank Stephenson hopes it will, but for now, most seem to agree that the British supercar's looks are unexciting - maybe even generic, especially when compared to the likes of the Ferrari 458 Italia. That doesn't seem to be the case though with this conceptual proposal for a flagship McLaren supercar from Matt Williams, a graduate of Coventry University's Transportation Design degree program.