Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson is to unveil his highly anticipated review of Britain's newest supercar, the McLaren P1, in an exclusive for December’s issue of BBC TopGear magazine.
Clarkson is the first journalist to get behind the wheel of the 903bhp hybrid sports car and according to early reports, the P1 left quite an impression on the notoriously tough-to-impress Clarkson.
“We’ve seen fast cars before,” he wrote, “but we have never encountered anything quite like the P1. This takes our perception of speed to a new level.”
In a 16-page feature, Clarkson reveals the McLaren – which officially accelerates from 0-62mph in just 2.8 seconds and will do 217mph flat-out – is so fast that it repeatedly interrupted his filming for Top Gear’s P1 television feature, which will be shown on BBC2 early next year.
“The trouble was that as I belted round, I’d been trying to deliver my pieces to camera, and I hadn’t managed to complete a single one without interrupting myself with a sudden, wide-eyed ‘f*****g hell’,” wrote Clarkson.
The carbon-fibre P1 is built at McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, and costs £866,000. Just 375 cars shall ever be made, making it one of the rarest, most expensive British cars of all time. And, according to Clarkson, one of the most memorable. “Remember to forget all you think you know when you press the accelerator,” he says. “Because what happens when you do isn’t real. It’s from a world of sci-fi and monsters and fear. It makes everything else look like the past…”