The McLaren P1 made an appearance at the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este in Lake Como, Italy for a demonstration that went horribly wrong. The much-hyped plug-in hybrid is considered the successor to the company's F1 racecar. Only 375 P1's will ever be assembled and when the car finally goes on sale, it will carry a price tag north of $1 million dollars. Unfortunately, McLaren still seems to be having trouble getting the car to turn on.
As captured in a video footage posted to numerous media outlets, McLaren brought out a shiny, new, yellow P1 to the car show and put it on display, evidently leaving several of its functions on for a large part of the day. When McLaren engineers attempted to turn the car on to demo its engine, the car simply did nothing. It is unclear if the mishap was the result of the battery dying, but all attempts to jumpstart the P1 failed. On the dashboard, a display clearly read "Park Brake Fault. Call McLaren Service Centre."
Eventually, engineers were forced to push the car back onto its trailer with its futuristic UFO-like design and dramatic butterfly gullwing doors. The scene looked truly ridiculous and was probably quite embarrassing for the McLaren employees involved.
A small child and a BMW engineer were apparently also on hand to help push the car.
McLaren P1: Specs
The McLaren P1 uses a 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 based heavily on the engine from the MP4-12C. Together with a separate electric motor that independently generates 176 horsepower, the P1 can churn out 903 horses at 7500 rpm and produces 664 lb.-ft of torque.
McLaren P1 owners will have the option of running the car solely on its electric motor, although they won't get very far. The car's all-electric range is approximately 12 miles and the battery takes about 2 hours to fully charge.
The car has a top speed of 239 mph, but electric safeguards limit that to 217 mph. The P1 can go from 0 to 62 in 2.7 seconds.
