Earlier this year an interesting report from the UK’s Car Magazine stated that BMW and McLaren we’re working together on a new supercar. The car community was understandably excited, seeing as the last BMW-McLaren project was the F1, but it turns out the report was incorrect.
Australia’s Motoring.com.au recently spoke to the head of BMW’s M brand, Frank van Meel, who aggressively shot down the idea of a BMW-McLaren partnership. van Meel, along with BMW CEO Harald Krüger and BMW R&D director Klaus Fröhlich were all cited in the story as having backed the idea of the McLaren-BMW partnership, but none of them have talked to McLaren.
“I haven’t had a phone call, Harald Krüger hasn’t had a phone call and Klaus hasn’t had a phone call,” said van Meel.
“We haven’t made one, either, and we don’t have plans to,” he added.
The report claimed BMW would tap McLaren to use the carbon fiber tub being developed for the next-generation 650S, while it would use its own quad-turbocharged V8 engine. This doesn’t make sense, van Meel said, as BMW is perfectly capable of developing its own carbon fiber tub.
“I don’t understand why we would need to work with McLaren for a supercar anyway,” he said.
“All of the technologies the story suggested are technologies that are core competences here at BMW and at M.”
“Nobody in the world is more advanced with carbon-fibre than we are.”
So there you have it. If a BMW supercar was in the works, which it isn’t, the automaker would be perfectly capable of developing and building it without the help of a supercar manufacturer like McLaren.
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