McLaren MP4-12C Enters Production; The British Exotic is Back

Having debuted to critical acclaim at last year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, McLaren Automotive’s highly anticipated road car, the MP4-12C has now gone into production, the very first example taking shape at the McLaren Technical Centre in Woking, Surrey, just outside of London.

The company has said that it plans to build 1,000 of the MP4-12Cs for 2011 and most of those will be assembled at McLaren’s brand new bespoke Production Centre, adjacent to the current facility, though chassis #001 will be entirely assembled at the existing MTC, in order to monitor engineering and production processes, which the company has been fine tuning, ever since the Technical Centre first opened back in 2004.

In addition, prototypes have undergone rigorous testing at the hands of McLaren F1 drivers and former World Champions Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button, who have been providing valued feedback during the MP4-12C’s development.

So far, the MP4-12C has a long waiting list of customers, stretching across the globe; Antony Sheriff, Managing Director of McLaren Automotive recently said, “meeting our prospective customers at launch events around the world, from Dubai to Cape Town, Paris to Los Angeles, has filled us with inspiration. There is a genuine desire for McLaren to be launching our own range of sports cars, and an exciting appreciation of what McLaren stands for: innovation, technology leadership, and a winning mentality.”

It has taken just five years for the MP4-12C to evolve from a concept developed in McLaren’s own F1 simulator to an ultra high performance car fully certified for street use. McLaren currently has a retailer network of 35 locations in some 19 different countries that will sell the final, production ready MP4-12C.

Pricing the U.S. is set at $229,000 for the 600-hp, twin-turbo V8 machine.