No McLaren-BMW supercar
Cold water immediately poured on suggestions of another joint supercar projectBMW’s hot-car honcho has comprehensively slapped down reports that it will team up with McLaren to build a mid-engined V8 supercar.
In answer to motoring.com.au’s enquiries, M boss Frank van Meel said the concept was pure fantasy and that there had been no contact with McLaren from anybody at either BMW or M.
“I haven’t had a phone call, Harald Krüger [BMW’s CEO] hasn’t had a phone call and Klaus Fröhlich [BMW’s Research and Development director] hasn’t had a phone call,” he said.
All three men were cited in the original story published by UK magazine, CAR.
“We haven’t made one, either, and we don’t have plans to,” van Meel stated.
The report suggested a prototype would be shown at the Frankfurt motor show in 2017, running on a development of McLaren’s ubiquitous carbon-fibre T16 tub and using a 4.0-litre biturbo V8, before being built in late 2018.
“We admire McLaren and we have obviously worked with them in the past, but there is nothing on the agenda,” van Meel insisted.
“The halo car of the entire BMW brand is the i8 and a lot of money and engineering has been invested in it. It will remain the only halo for its lifecycle.
“It would make no sense for us to put a car above the i8, or even priced near it, that would have the same sort of layout but more power.”
That hasn’t stopped plenty of people hoping for a V8 conversion for the i8’s carbon-fibre tub, replacing the inline three-cylinder motor. But that motor is mounted laterally, and reworking the architecture to accept a longitudinal V8 would demand a lot more than just losing the back seats.
“I don’t understand why we would need to work with McLaren for a supercar anyway,” he said.
“All of the technologies the story suggested are technologies that are core competences here at BMW and at M.
“Nobody in the world is more advanced with carbon-fibre than we are."
We have shown how strong we are with electric boosting for performance and efficiency, plus we still have a great V8 engine here. What would we need McLaren to do for us?” van Meel stated.
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