McLaren 720S Le Mans Celebrates 25 Years Since Famous 24 Hour Win

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

This article was published by Andrew Evans (@Famine) on June 17th, 2020 in the Automotive News category.

 

If they REALLY want to celebrate they would put that drivers seat in the middle.

 

Love the rims!

 

Cool

 

Cool idea but come on, make a middle driver seat and at LEAST 250MPH to even use the iconic McLaren F1 name or Fa1 accomplishment. 15 years later and the current “modern” version doesn’t exceed 241MPH?!?!

 

Those OZ wheels are classic, they work on anything

 

Yeah cool, but why the 720S instead of the Speedtail?

 

Well the Speedtail was heavily advertised as a Hyper GT, McLaren mentioned that practially every time they talked about it. And the special variants of the McLaren hypercars seem to follow what they're originally designed for (for example the Senna did get the "LM" makeover plus the faster GTR, similar story with the P1), while their "normal" cars get pretty much whatever. If the Speedtail were to get a special variant I'm 100% sure it'd keep its Hyper GT-ness, and would not be a hommage to a race car.

 

So cool it looks better than a Bugatti

 

Only fault one thing:
Bring this car for la sarthe and repeat the victory with 720's.

 

Likely just much easier to sell. Beyond the wheels which McLaren had already began re-manufacturing for the Senna LM, & the front fenders and roof scoop developed for the 765LT, one could've ordered a regular 720S in these color combos through MSO if the imagination was there at the time. It probably wouldn't have been hard to develop some new exterior touches for the Speedtail just as easy, and recoup the costs back in the limited run, but given the cost differences, the 720S should be far easier to move.

Still, my first thought was similar, except why not the upcoming 765LT. Deliveries haven't started so order sheet surely would've been filled immediately, & would pay an even closer homage being the track version. You'd even get the badass, center-stack quad exhaust.

 

Imagine thinking that this is a concern for a car north of $500,000.

 

As the article states, the Le Mans winning car never even topped 174mph. If you want a true successor to the McLaren F1, you need to look towards the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 with it's NA V12 and centre-placed driver position. But you can't blame McLaren for wanting to cash in on such a historic achievement, even if they don't really make anything comparable now.