2022 Mclaren 765lt Spider on 2040-cars

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The story behind the Bruce Meyers racecar bed

It must have been quite a spectacle to watch as a full-size vehicle trailer pulled up in front of the Schorrs' suburban house and delivered a garish French Racing Blue sports car. But it might not have been all that odd. "My world was the car world, and my dad was the car guy," Stuart Schorr, now Jaguar Land Rover communications chief, recalls of his youth. His father Marty was the editor in chief of high performance car magazines during the muscle-car era of the '60s and '70s. "I was the only kid who had a Plymouth Superbird parked in the driveway, who got driven to school in a hot-rodded Corvette." Yet this vehicle was extraordinary, even by Schorr standards. Made of thick fiberglass, with four-spoke mags and racing slicks, it looked like a McLaren M6 Can-Am racer – wide, voluptuous, and impossibly low. But in place of niceties like the front intake, cockpit, and engine, it had a broad cutout the size and shape of a coffin. Also, it unbolted in the middle lengthwise. Workers hauled it into the house, one piece at a time, through the window, and bolted it together in Stuart's bedroom, finishing with a full-size twin mattress. "When Stuart came home from school, he found the McLaren bed in his room," Marty Schorr says. "I'm pretty sure he slept in that bed until he went away to college." (This may have been the most unusually effective form of teen birth control. "No female ever saw that bed," Stuart confesses.) One of the great mysteries of the bed was its provenance. "If you looked under the plastic tires, it had these stickers that said B.F. Meyers & Company." This was the imprint of Bruce Meyers, creator of the Meyers Manx: the flippant fiberglass wonder that ushered in – and was then summarily ushered out of – the Volkswagen dune buggy conversion market. Did Bruce Meyers build a kids' bed? And, if so, why? Bruce Meyers grew up near the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, surfing and diving illegally off the piers. "That's the kind of life I led as a boy," he says during an extensive interview. "It was one with a lot of intolerance for rules." A thorough iconoclast, he attended art school. He spent time sailing. He lived on a coral atoll in the South Seas and ran a pearl trading post. And then he returned to Southern California and worked in a shipyard. "Boat building at that time was moving over from wooden to fiberglass construction.

McLaren pencils in electrified P1 successor for 2024 release

The limited-edition P1's long-awaited successor will be the next model added to McLaren's Ultimate Series. The company confirmed development work has started, but it won't release the yet-unnamed car until 2024. Picking up where the P1 (pictured) left off is a Herculean task; the hybrid hypercar built from 2013 to 2015 is one of the models that defined electrified performance in the 2010s. Its successor can't be merely an evolution of it with a re-shaped lower bumper and a 15-horsepower bump. It needs to take a leap forward in terms of design, technology, and performance. McLaren hasn't revealed what the car will be powered by, but its chief executive stated electrification is a must. "We haven't announced the powertrain. Obviously, looking forward, it will be either hybridized or an EV," company boss Mike Flewitt told British magazine Autocar. The carmaker previously affirmed it's not in a rush to release an electric car, and Flewitt highlighted the many hurdles still standing in the way of the technology.  "Take the 765LT as an example. We know a lot of customers are going to take that to the track. If it were an EV, you would be looking at maybe 30 minutes of running time, and then plugging it in until the next day. That's not a persuasive position," he explained. Electric technology is advancing at a rapid pace, so engineers could solve these problems in the coming years, but most signs point to the P1's successor offering hybrid power. Looks will be very much a part of the car's appeal, and it's expected to move McLaren's design language forward. It's reasonable to assume active aerodynamic add-ons and an adjustable suspension will be part of the package, too. More details about the car (which will arrive as a limited-edition model) will emerge in the coming months. The four-year time frame gives McLaren plenty of time to fine-tune the coupe, which it refers to internally as the son of P1. In the meantime, it's focusing on ramping up production of the Elva, a windshield-less Ultimate Series model originally limited to 399 units. The firm lowered that figure to 249 after analyzing feedback from its clients. Related Video:

McLaren gets a $185 million boost

DUBAI — British supercar manufacturer McLaren Group, which includes its Formula One team, has arranged a 150 million pound ($185.2 million) financing facility with the National Bank of Bahrain (NBB), the Gulf bank said on Monday. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the company hard, with sales plunging during a factory shutdown. It announced 1,200 layoffs in May. "Final documentation has been signed and all the necessary approvals have been granted in relation to a ... 150 million (pound) financing facility," NBB said. Bahrain sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat Holding Co is the majority shareholder in McLaren Group, with a 56% stake. Mumtalakat also holds a 44.06% stake in NBB while the government of Bahrain holds a 10.85% stake. McLaren's Formula One future was never in doubt despite the cash crisis, team principal Andreas Seidl said on Tuesday. "It was a tough period for the team, steering a team through these financial difficulties we were in," Seidl told reporters. "The positive news we had yesterday about the funding which is in place now, is I think an extra boost, an extra motivation for all of us who are fully focused again on what we like to do most and what we do best." McLaren was the first team to furlough staff, with drivers Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz also taking pay cuts, and the team also went through layoffs, a move that also reflects Formula One's 2021 budget cap. "With me and (McLaren Racing Chief Executive) Zak (Brown) having detailed knowledge of what was actually going on ... there was never a doubt of McLaren not being on the grid next year," said Seidl. The financial issues had not affected this season, he added, with regular performance upgrades planned. While some infrastructure projects had been put on hold, Seidl said he was pushing to get them going again although McLaren still had to be cautious due to uncertainty over how many races there would be and the impact on revenues. The German suggested some headlines that triggered alarm, with talk of mortgaging historical cars and the McLaren headquarters building in Woking, England, or selling a minority stake in the team, reflected McLaren's search for the best possible option in terms of funding. "(It was) finding the right funding which would not only get us through this crisis but also put us in the best possible position to be competitive in the future. So I am very happy with the news from yesterday," he said.