McLaren P1: still as earth-shattering five years on?

And so it did. And in 2013, the P1 arrived with a relatively small-capacity (3.8-litre) twin-turbo V8 engine making 727bhp, augmented by a 176bhp electric motor – which came in mostly to fill in lag from the big turbos – but produced a total of 903bhp and 664lb ft. While Porsche and Ferrari have also had hybrid hypercars, nothing like this has before, or since, rolled out of the doors at Sant’Agata Bolognese. 

Which is not to be too critical of Lamborghini, mind. As m’colleague Prosser says, adding turbochargers and batteries to Lamborghini’s magnificent V12 is not going to improve it one jot. McLaren is a technology company. Lamborghini deals in other things: old-school charm; in-yer-face powertrain histrionics. At college, the P1 is the bespectacled, front-of-class swot notching up A grade after A grade. The Aventador sits further back, makes more noise, garners more attention and wilfully gathers a crowd so it can tell them how great it is, how athletic it is. It just happens that the P1 is better at sport too. 

Again, that’s not a criticism of the Lamborghini. The P1 was more expensive and fewer were built. It was not – although they are coming, and soon – a full-series production hybrid McLaren. So the P1’s specialness – of production, price, ethos – allows it to be exquisitely crafted and finished. 

To sit in it today is to still feel like climbing into the future. This P1 – a hard-worn, 20,000-mile development hack, our road test car and one of two P1s retained by McLaren – is fabulous inside, with the kind of finish that looks at once extravagantly crafted but engineered to minimalism. 

In some cars, bare carbonfibre is used as a flourish. Here, it is what every surface is made from and is left exposed. Weight is the enemy of performance and adding an electric motor and batteries – even ones inspired by F1 and optimised for performance, not range – meant a struggle to get the P1 to weigh less than 1500kg. So, inside, there is as little of anything as possible. It would be as black as the inside of a bare carbonfibre-hulled, round-the-world racing yacht were it not for the vast screen and glass roof panels – the latter a theme that this year’s 720S takes up. There’s a lot of P1, in fact, that represents the modern McLaren but, instead of being sanitised, here it’s exposed to the world. 

That’s deliberate, says Parry-Williams: “We had an intense, philosophical internal battle when we did the P1. The mission with the 12C was: we don’t want to hear the turbos. But those of us working on the P1 said this is a high-pressure turbo engine, so let’s celebrate it; let’s make it sound part of the character of the car.” 

And, crikey, it is every inch a part of its character. The P1 fires to a loud, flat idle, but there are endearing electronic and electrical whizzes too. Under way, there are whooshes as turbos spool and fizzes as they unwind, like you’re in the trachea of a great athlete, witness to every hard-taken inhalation and exhalation. It’s a terrific noise, an engaging noise. It’s not a naturally aspirated V12, but what is? 

“We were well aware that Ferrari was going to come up with [the LaFerrari] and it was going to sound classically awesome,” says Parry-Williams. “We didn’t have a V12 in the toy box, so we went about doing something different, and that has to continue. 

“If you listen to LMP1 cars, there’s a cacophonous load of stuff going on; you’ve got high-power switching, straight-cut gears and all kinds of weird stuff, and we have to figure out what are the really cool functional aural cues – that are exciting, that we can use – and embrace them in the same way. That’s the honest way of doing it, so that’s what we’ll do.” 

There’s a word: honesty. And for what might seem like the added complexity, the convolution, of not just artificial induction from two turbochargers but also an electric motor that takes its power from deceleration and when the car’s engine isn’t working flat out, there is a notable honesty about the P1’s work. Like a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, the engineering is laid out in front of you and you’re offered the chance to feel it. To try it. To thrash the merry hell out of it. And, I must say, I rather like that. 

Delve into what a P1 has to offer and I suspect you, too, will like it. More so than an Aventador, perhaps, although that’s less because of what makes it and more about how thoroughly the P1 was honed. Unlike with the Aventador, you’ll have no qualms with the driving position or the instruments. It feels lighter (and it is), more compact, it rides with both comfort and control, it steers with delicacy and intimacy, it brakes superbly.

It feels light on its feet, and impossibly fast and responsive – linearly and predictably so, too, which is its engineers’ real skill. It is not just an absurdly fast hypercar. It is one of the all-time great driver’s cars. It feels thoroughly modern yet like it will be an immediate, all-time classic. That values are now more than twice the £866,000 that McLaren charged in the first place suggests it will be. 

Which is interesting. That’s still quite a lot less than a McLaren F1 and, while auction values are no arbiters of a car’s place in history, the F1, the Lamborghini, any big Ferrari still do something to us all, right? “I’m sure kids who are still at school, they’re going to look back at us and think: ‘Oh, look at those old guys,’” says Parry-Williams. “Turbo engines are not as viscerally exciting as naturally aspirated engines.” Are we, perhaps, on our way out, people like us? 

“There’s a reality here we have to confront because, in the end, there won’t be fossil fuel burning engines,” says Parry-Williams. “That’s already decided, isn’t it? So we have to make those cars as engaging as those we know and love. That’s our challenge.” 

Could you improve a P1 by popping a naturally aspirated V12 into its middle? Perhaps. But then it wouldn’t be a P1 and it wouldn’t look like a future that, thanks to cars like the P1, 918 Spyder and LaFerrari, is worth embracing. 

What the P1 means to me: 

It was not the P1’s power I remember most. It was the hybrid’s ability to eliminate turbo lag, the suspension’s ability to triple its spring rate at the press of the button and the body’s ability to generate more downforce than any production road car in history. These are the factors that will most influence the supercars of the future. In fact, they already are. AF