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Lego McLaren Senna is cheap to own, but you have to build it yourself

At about a million dollars, the McLaren Senna's price tag is eye-popping. But if you're willing to build it yourself, you can get it for a fraction of the price. Well, and if you're OK with it being much smaller and made of plastic, since this assembly-required Senna is a new Lego Speed Champions kit. Since the Speed Champions cars are quite small, a lot of detail is lost, especially when replicating such a complex and detailed car as the Senna. But key details such as the clear door panels and airplane-sized wing have been translated to brick. The kit also includes a wind tunnel fan so your Lego mini figures can live the McLaren engineer life, finding ways to cut drag on a vehicle with so many flat surfaces and sharp corners. The Lego McLaren kit is available now wherever Legos are sold. On the Lego web store, it's listed for $14.99. Related Video:

McLaren testing an EV, but challenges remain to electrify a hypercar

There are new details on McLaren's ongoing quest to build an all-electric supercar. Autocar reports that the specialty carmaker has been testing an EV mule to evaluate driver engagement and has discovered it's still a big leap to fully electrifying a track car. The biggest stumbling block remains the battery technology and the enormous energy demands of track racing. "Let's say you want to drive on a track for half an hour," Dan Parry-Williams, McLaren's engineering design director, told Autocar. "If that was an EV, that car would have over 500 miles of EV range, and it would be flat as a pancake at the end. The energy required to do really high performance on track is staggering. And then you have to recharge it." He notes that the technology is improving but adds that "there's a lot more investment" going into range-extending energy-dense batteries than into the kind of power density needed for supercar performance. McLaren has been talking about making fully electric versions of its cars for a while now, but it sounds like a pure EV hypercard is still a ways off. Meanwhile, expect it to focus on hybrids: McLaren plans to have half of its fleet feature hybrid powertrains by 2022. Its P1 already has a hybrid powertrain, as will the forthcoming BP23. "You can potentially manage (a flat battery) with a niche car," Parry-Williams told Autocar. "If you exhaust the battery but then have to do one recharging lap, that strikes me as being OK. But if you haven't got an on-board generator (and) you've got a full EV, you haven't got the luxury of doing that."Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. McLaren 720S First Drive | Autoblog

McLaren opens up the 650S Spider

A good solid year separated the release of the McLaren MP4-12C and its Spider counterpart. McLaren isn't waiting that long, however, to reveal its new 650S Spider – in fact it's presenting both versions at the same time here at the Geneva Motor Show. But while Woking has given us plenty of details and photos of the coupe to chew on in the lead up to the show, it has just now revealed the full skinny on its open-topped companion, presented here in a new shade of McLaren's signature orange. With the same 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 producing the same 641-horsepower, McLaren quotes the 0-62 mile-per-hour time for the 650S Spider at the same 3.0 seconds flat as the 650S coupe. Line up both versions and keep the pedals planted on both all the way up to 124, however, and the coupe will get there 0.2 seconds faster than the roadster. It'll take just one-tenth longer to cover a quarter mile, and it'll also top out at 204, three fewer miles per hour than the coupe, but fuel consumption is quoted as identical. In other words, the performance difference is negligible. That's because the Spider weighs just 88 pounds more than the coupe – less even than what Alfa Romeo took to chop the roof off the 4C, and the new McLaren (like the 12C Spider) uses a retractable hardtop at that, taking just 17 seconds to drop or raise at speeds of up to 19 mph. That's a pretty impressive transformation, leaving those who enjoy the best of both worlds with few reasons not to go with the roadster. But while pricing hasn't been announced, we have the distinct feeling it's not a choice many people will have to make. OPEN-TOP MCLAREN 650S SPIDER JOINS 650S COUPE IN GENEVA GLOBAL DEBUT - New McLaren 650S Spider just as engaging on road and track as fixed-roof Coupe - 0-100km/h (62 mph) takes 3.0 seconds, 0-200 km/h (124 mph) in 8.6 seconds - No reduction in torsional strength due to unique carbon fibre MonoCell chassis; similar weight, too - Two piece roof can be raised or lowered in less than 17 seconds on the move at speeds up to 30 km/h (19 mph) McLaren Automotive has now released images and full information for the convertible version of its latest model, the McLaren 650S, unveiled at the 84th International Geneva Motor Show. The McLaren 650S Spider is a no compromise open-top high performance sports car offering the same performance, handling and driver enjoyment, with the addition of a two-piece retractable hard top.