The McLaren W1 Is Another Moonshot At Greatness

The McLaren W1 renews the brand’s “moonshot” tradition by delivering a new flagship focused on extreme performance and radical hybrid engineering. The article recalls that Bruce McLaren’s plan for a road-legal sports car never reached production before his death, and it took decades for a McLaren road model to arrive. In 1992, the McLaren F1 became a benchmark, and later the P1 debuted in 2013, joining the Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder. Now the W1 arrives as McLaren’s next “1” and is priced at $2.1 million, with its closest reference competitor being the $3.9 million Ferrari F80. McLaren says the W1 produces 1,258 hp and 988 lb-ft, with a 0–60 mph time of 2.0 seconds, 0–124 in 5.8, 2,205 pounds of downforce, and an electronically limited top speed of 217 mph. A radial flux electric motor adds 342 hp alongside a 1.4 kWh battery, enabling up to 1.6 miles on EV power. The car weighs 3,084 lbs dry.