At a recent auto-industry presentation in the UK, McLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt challenged British engineers to lead a "weight race," rather than a horsepower race in search of speed. That may sound silly coming from the man who presides over a company whose least powerful car, the 540C, serves up 533 hp, but it's also admirable. Cutting weight in performance cars is almost never a bad thing, and Flewitt puts his money where his mouth is with the new McLaren Senna.
Carfection's Henry Catchpole shows us some of the individual carbon-fiber components making up the Senna, and they're utterly amazing. That huge carbon wing? It weighs just 11 pounds. A front fender? Just 1.5 pounds, a result of new carbon-fiber manufacturing technique.
The Senna isn't the prettiest car when taken as a whole—and to McLaren's credit, the company said it would look more "brutal" than anything—but each of these pieces is gorgeous. It's a fitting tribute to the material McLaren helped bring into the mainstream.
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A car enthusiast since childhood, Chris Perkins served as Road & Track's engineering nerd and Porsche apologist.
