It’s not actually that terrible to look at. Back in the day, equipping a car with a turbocharger meant designers would go nuts about getting the heat out, but this has just two clean vent holes. Photo from fordauthority.com
May 13, 2023
I guess the oil was supposed to warm the place up? Next came the 90s, when the planet was going to burn because people were using too many aerosol cans. As a user of both oil and aerosols, I’m declaring myself carbon neutral, a non-entity in terms of damage. Am I wrong? Did my math not math out? Anyways, one thing that the fuel crisis of the 70’s brought us, was a serious look into forced induction, mostly turbochargers.
100% efficiency, in terms of power production anyways."
The idea was genius, though it was nothing new. Use spent exhaust gas pressure to spin a turbine, which forces more air into the engine. Add the appropriate amount of fuel to balance it back out, and you have an engine that effectively runs over 100% efficiency, in terms of power production anyways. It would have been a home run if McLaren had taken the 5.0 Mustang GT and boosted it to the moon, but unfortunately, they chose a 2.3-litre 4-cylinder instead.
Full disclosure: even though these things had less than half the engine that the GT cars had, they were still fast. In fact, the 5.0 litre wasn’t even available when this car was built, replaced by the 4.2 litre V8, the same thing with a shorter stroke, and of course, less horsepower. The short-stroke V8 drizzled out a disappointing 119 horsepower, while the fire-breathing four-cylinder McLaren 2.3 turbo barked out an incredible 175 horsepower. Backed by a four-speed manual transmission, I bet this thing was a blast to drive.
The flared fenders front and rear are steel, while the hood is fibreglass, with pins to make sure it stays latched down. Honestly, it has all the cool 80’s stuff that you’d want. 15-inch BBS wheels, Koni struts and shocks, Recaro seats, Stewart Warner gauges, and even a roll bar and air conditioning. Apparently, this is the car that started the Ford SVO department. They made ten of them, which doesn’t seem like that many, but they didn’t come cheap. If my MSRP math is as good or better than my carbon math, I’ve calculated that you could have purchased roughly three V8 cars for the price of one McLaren, a staggering $25,000 in 1981. Not only that, but you could have more fun in the V8 cars: if you blew one of them up from spirited driving, you had a chance at a warranty, a safety net that the McLaren did not offer.
Out of the ten, I wonder if any blew up, allowing the owner to swap in a 5.0 litre and rig up a turbo on it? That would be a fun car.
