2018 Mclaren 720s Performance on 2040-cars

Auto blog

McLaren Sabre revealed with over 800 horsepower and 218-mph top speed

The McLaren Sabre is out and ready for business. While McLaren hasn’t provided its usual full information drop and detailed set of photos, McLaren of Beverly Hills has posted the first customer car on its website and released some details about the car. One thing to know off the top is exclusivity: There will only be 15 Sabres built, and all of them are headed to the U.S. It was designed and personalized by McLaren Special Operations (MSO) to exacting U.S. standards, featuring “ideas and innovations that global homologation would not permit.” What those features and ideas are, McLaren isn't specifically disclosing (we asked). All McLaren could do was suggest that some of the aerodynamic elements and body work would not pass European or Asian homologation requirements. The Sabre is packing more power than any other non-hybrid McLaren, beating out the Elva by 20 horsepower for a total of 824 ponies and 590 pound-feet of torque from the 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8. Acceleration figures arenÂ’t available, but top speed is 218 mph. That makes it the fastest two-seat McLaren ever. Given the Senna-like huge aero all throughout the SabreÂ’s body, we imagine itÂ’s rather lethal on a racetrack, too. McLaren says it involved the future owners in development of the Sabre more than any car previous. The 15 folks buying got to have a close relationship with the MSO team of designers, engineers and test drivers in an effort to personalize each car to their preferred specifications. McLaren flew out test mules for buyers to get behind the wheel of at the Thermal Club. Then, they got to tell McLaren what they thought of the drive. Typically, feedback comes after owners take delivery of the finished car, so this is rather unusual. ThereÂ’s no official price from McLaren on the Sabre, but it hardly matters. All 15 cars are spoken for and sold, so nobody else will need to mull over the likely exorbitant MSRP. Related video:

The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

Fernando Alonso to miss Australian Grand Prix

Fernando Alonso hasn't missed a Formula One race since the tire debacle at 2005 United States Grand Prix, but he won't be racing at the upcoming season-opener in Australia this month. The two-time world champion suffered a concussion in a crash during a pre-season test session in Barcelona late last month and was airlifted to a local hospital. He was subsequently released and went home to recover, but sat out the following test session. Now McLaren has announced that while he's recuperating nicely, his doctors have advised him to avoid a situation that could put him back in harm's way for the time being. McLaren and Alonso hope that he'll be back to racing condition in time for the second round at the Malaysian Grand Prix at the end of the month. But in the meantime Kevin Magnussen, who drove for the team last season before being bumped down to test and reserve driver, will drive the new Honda-powered MP4-30 at the Australian Grand Prix alongside Jenson Button.