McLaren have a great deal of administrative and financial matters to deal with at the moment, but the show must go on. Preparing for products that will work in the years to come — like a crossover, perhaps? The British super sports car maker has announced a technical collaboration with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to "explore future design approaches."
Skunk Works is the nickname for the airline's advanced development program, a nickname taken from the "Skonk Oil" plant in the "Li'l Abner" comics that was popular when Lockheed got the commission to build America's first fighter jet in the 1940s. Since then, Skunk Works has built some of America's most iconic aircraft, including the U2 spy plane, F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning, and SR-71 Blackbird.
McLaren says its focus is on the Lockheed division's design program, a proprietary code that "sets the standards for high-speed systems more accurately and quickly than traditional design approaches." Hey, if it's running at Mach 3 at 81,000 feet, it's probably running at 300 kph on the ground. McLaren engineers and Skunk Works developers will collaborate to find out.
If nothing else, McLaren might pick up occasional aerodynamic tips by association, any of which could help the new Artura hybrid and eventually the McLaren EV.
The opening group photo of the partnership places the McLaren Artura next to Lockheed Martin's DarkStar hypersonic aircraft: Top Gun: Maverick. The prop aircraft was powered by a viable technology called "combined-cycle thrust" that Lockheed Martin had designed for what was to be the SR-71's successor, the SR-72 - very similar to the Darkstar. The two engine principles mated a well-reworked Mach 3 fighter jet with a twin-mode turbofan known as a scramjet that could catapult the plane to a cruising speed of Mach 6. Let's hope McLaren can figure out how to get a piece of that in its car.
Comments