McLaren - by Kyle Fortune (Hardcover)

About the Book

The definitive illustrated history of the exotic sports cars and supercars of McLaren Automotive

Book Synopsis

When the McLaren Formula 1 team set up McLaren Cars and launched the revolutionary, iconic F1 road car in 1992, it turned the supercar world upside down. McLaren wouldn't make another road car itself until it formed McLaren Automotive in 2010. It was set up with the vision not just to rival the established companies in the sports and supercar marketplace, but to disrupt and to constantly innovate in its pursuit of performance. Readers will learn the following:
- Upstart company McLaren Automotive applied Formula 1 engineering expertise, innovation, and radical thinking to create cars that quickly became benchmarks for performance, ride, and handling against long-established supercar manufacturers such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche.
- Unparalleled insight from the designers, engineers, aerodynamicists, and test drivers who create McLaren Automotive's cars, with modern, independent insight from test drives by automotive journalists and the author
- Detailed technical insight, background stories, and data to the creation, development, and manufacture of all of McLaren Automotive's sensational cars, with the text supported by comprehensive data tables and illustrated by images from a team of world-renowned automotive photographers This book contains incredible insight and detail from access to McLaren's press archives, as well as interviews with countless key people within the company. The first and only book dedicated entirely to McLaren's incredible road cars, this is the complete history of a fascinating automotive brand that's challenged the establishment.

Review Quotes

...a warm and considered tribute to a company of furious dynamism...chronicles the evolution of the modern supercar from a unique perspective. It's well with a look.--Overrun Magazine

...written by an individual who was present throughout the development journey...the amount of new information [the author] provides is quite impressive...a highly recommended read for any McLaren owner and enthusiast.--McLaren Life

Being a part of the start of McLaren Automotive was something really unique. The subsequent chapter in British sports car history flew by at a million miles an hour. We were busy! This is an amazingly detailed read that helped me re-live the technical journey and took me back to "my" period from 12C to Senna. Great times and great cars . . .--Chris Goodwin, Chief Test Driver, McLaren Automotive

Is there anything better than finding the exact thing you didn't know you needed? That's "McLaren: The Road Cars." This will sound odd, but I skipped right over all the F1 and Mercedes SLR stuff--I could write up 2,000 words on the former from memory. No, I had to get to the chapter on the birth of the MP4-12C, an itch I've needed scratched for more than ten years now. How and why did McLaren cook up and serve what history will surely judge as the most important supercar from the first quarter of this century? Furthermore, how did that gutsy yet flawed moonshot lead, only a few years later, to the McLaren 720S, a machine I consider to be the true successor to the Lamborghini Countach? In other words, how did little McLaren reinvent the supercar? The answers to those questions, and everything else about every other McLaren road car, are all here.--Motor Trend

It's a chunky book and uses its length to go into detail about not only McLaren's core range, but also to cover every special edition and one-off they've done since 2010 in detail. It's definitely a comprehensive tome, and bang up to date, ending with the Artura and 750S.--Octane Magazine