Earlier this week we reported that BMW and McLaren could be cooking up something special for us but sadly it seems this is completely not the case. Unfortunately, the BMW-McLaren alleged partnership was debunked by BMW M Boss, Frank van Meel. Motoring managed to get an interview with Van Meel and he stated that the idea was “pure fantasy” and said that “I haven’t had a phone call, Harald Krüger hasn’t had a phone call and Klaus Fröhlich hasn’t had a phone call. We haven’t made one, either, and we don’t have plans to.” BMW doesn’t seem to keen obstruct their halo car in its line-up, as Frank van Meel continued stating “We admire McLaren and we have obviously worked with them in the past, but there is nothing on the agenda. The halo car of the entire BMW brand is the i8 and a lot of money and engineering has been invested in it. It will remain the only halo for its lifecycle. It would make no sense for us to put a car above the i8, or even priced near it, that would have the same sort of layout but more power.”
“I don’t understand why we would need to work with McLaren for a supercar anyway. 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. We have shown how strong we are with electric boosting for performance and efficiency, plus we still have a great V8 engine here. What would we need McLaren to do for us?”
