McLaren is shining the spotlight away from the established 12C model, as it pauses production of the model in order to concentrate on manufacturing the stepping stone between it and the flagship P1, the new 650S. Apparently, there’s great demand for the 650S and not enough production capacity.

Another reason why that’s good for them is that it kicks the number of model naming styles in the range down to two… that’s something they really need to work on: cohesion of model names.

The news comes via PistonHeads, and they say the source comes from close to the top of McLaren’s corporate ladder, its chief financial officer, Richard Molyneux. He said:

“There’s an element of customers wanting the newest and best. The 650S is partly a reaction to that, and our partly down to our own learning. There’s no point learning lessons like the big OEMs and then waiting six years to put them on a new model.”

Further reasoning behind the move could also be the eventual abolishment of the 12C, replacing it with the more powerful 650S. There’s no official word on this, but it doesn’t sound like a stretch at all.

By Andrei Nedelea

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