The number on the badge is 820, and the number a driver would feel is 809. McLaren has given its next series-production supercar the name McL 820, and the figure converts to roughly 809 mechanical horsepower, about 69 more than the 740 that McLaren rates the 750S it is due to replace. The car is promised for 2027, and no one outside the company has seen it.
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The reveal, such as it was, came as a sculpture on a London street rather than a press release. A giant kiwi sculpture appeared in Covent Garden with the letters McL 820 painted on its flank in black and orange, and the name was official within about a day.
A kiwi in Covent Garden gave the name away
PistonHeads reported that the statue was unveiled first and that McLaren confirmed the name roughly 24 hours later, describing the McL 820 as the next McLaren series supercar, coming in 2027. The kiwi is a nod to founder Bruce McLaren, the New Zealander who used the bird as his symbol, and Motor1 identified it as McLaren’s old “Speedy Kiwi” mascot. Motor1 adds that the new car is expected to use one of two hybrid powertrains McLaren is developing in-house rather than relying on outside suppliers.
Not every outlet treated the name as settled at first. Motor1’s original text said McLaren had not tied the name to a specific model, then added an update after the company confirmed it and released teasers, so early reporting on the car reads differently depending on when it was filed.
Where 809 comes from
McLaren’s badges have long followed a power figure in metric horsepower, and the 820 is read the same way. Auto Express put the output at 820PS, or 809bhp, ahead of the 750S’s 740bhp peak, and MotorWeek reached the same conversion in its own item on the teaser and the 2027 arrival. Motor1 credits Autocar with the reading.
Carscoops, which is the source of the 809-horsepower framing in the first place, was more cautious: its writer Chris Chilton described the number as inferred from the naming system rather than taken from a spec sheet, and said it would put the car within about ten horsepower of the Ferrari 296 GTB’s 819. McLaren has published no horsepower, torque, weight or price figure, so 809 should be read as the badge translated, not a measurement. McLaren’s own figure for the 750S is 740 horsepower, which makes the gain implied by the badge about 9 percent.
An engine McLaren will build itself
The more consequential change may be under the skin. Auto Express reports that McLaren is taking full in-house responsibility for designing and developing its own engines for the first time, having previously co-developed and built them with Ricardo. Motor1 adds that a second UK factory is being built to assemble engines in-house.
McLaren chief operating officer Michael Straughan was quoted by Motor1 saying the first such engine will start from the current V8 products or the next generation of them. PistonHeads, citing expectation rather than confirmation, says the McL 820 is likely to carry a self-built V8 with light hybridization, mid-mounted, with carbon-fiber architecture. That would make the car a successor to a lineage that began with the 720S and carried on through the 750S, whose 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 makes 740 horsepower. The last version of that car, the 200-unit 788HS, makes 777.
Carscoops writer Chris Chilton, whose piece first put the 809 figure in front of readers, says the car would sit about 70 horsepower above the 750S, and speculates that the engine will again be a twin-turbocharged V8, in contrast with the V6 in the Ferrari. He also points to the McL 6GT, a limited-series supercar priced around $1.5 million with McLaren’s first manual gearbox since the F1, as the model that introduced the new prefix.
The same reports describe a company in the middle of a reset. Alongside the engine plant, they mention a planned McLaren SUV on a front-engined platform still in development, and PistonHeads says Artura and GT production is expected to wind down next year, which would leave the McL 820 as the new core of the lineup.
What it replaces, and what is still unannounced
McLaren said in early October that final orders were being taken for the 750S, with production ending in 2027, according to TFLcar’s report. The McL 820 is the first model under a new naming scheme that began with the McL 6GT, the low-volume manual-transmission car shown at Monterey Car Week.
Still missing are the reveal date, the price, the powertrain details and whether 809 is a peak or a limited-edition floor. PistonHeads called the 820PS figure conservative enough to leave room for higher-output variants, and McLaren has promised more detail in due course. Until it supplies a spec sheet, the open question is how much of that number comes from the engine and how much from an electric motor.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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