Picture the scene: you’re driving around in your McLaren P1 when all of a sudden you come across another McLaren P1. How utterly embarrassed would you feel? Hypercars are getting so common these days so McLaren’s Special Operations division and a company called Lanzante (from fame of winning Le Mans in a F1 GTR in 1995 and converting F1 GTR for road use) decided to turn a few clients’ P1 GTRs into road legal monsters.
Yes, the car you see here is 100% road legal with number plates, indicators, and a windscreen wiper. Theoretically one could daily this. Imagine seeing this on your weekday commute. Powered by a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 that’s mated to a couple of electric motors, pumps out as near as makes no difference 1000hp/735kW. That’s propelling a car that’s 60kg lighter than a P1 GTR thanks to the removal of the GTR’s air jacks, lightweight seats from a F1 GTR, plastic windows, and some titanium.
Unsurprinsgly, carbon-fibre is used quite throughly. Most of it is exposed too, which is all nice and lovely. Being a road car it also has air con as standard. But being based on a track car, the tweaked aerodynamics in the form of a modified rear wing, front splitter, and dive planes have increased downforce by 40 percent. Some cars claim to have motorsport pedigree but this literally was born to be on the track.
So far McLaren’s Special Ops and Lanzante have converted five P1 GTRs to P1 LMs. A sixth car, in Gulf Racing colours, is on the way to a client in Japan. Fingers crossed I’ll get to see that. Price? Considering a P1 GTR is already in excess of $4 million, expect the P1 LM conversion to be a couple mil on top.
The P1 LM faces competition from the upcoming road conversion of the Aston Martin Vulcan. It seems the market is strong for $4 million track toys to be used on the road.