McLaren has never been shy about a stunt, but this one was properly odd. Last week a giant kiwi statue turned up in London's Covent Garden, wrapped in orange and black camouflage. Look closely and you'd spot a name printed down its side.
That name is McL 820, and it belongs to McLaren's next series production supercar, due in 2027.
The press release doesn't spell out what it's replacing, but it doesn't really need to. McLaren has already called time on the 750S, and the McL 820 is the car stepping into its shoes as the brand's mid-engined hero. As PistonHeads points out, with the Artura and GT both winding down production next year, it's arriving at a moment when McLaren badly needs one.
The number is the power figure. McLaren has confirmed 820PS, which works out to 603kW and roughly 70PS more than the 750S. That car took its name the same way, as did the 720S before it.
What's actually producing that power is still under wraps. McLaren hasn't said whether it's a straight V8 or a hybrid, and it isn't saying anything else about the car until next year.
The smart money is on a carbon fibre tub, because McLaren hasn't built a road car without one in decades, and PistonHeads reckons the new V8 McLaren has been developing in house is likely to make its debut here.
The kiwi, at least, needs no decoding. Bruce McLaren was a New Zealander, and he was the first to use the bird as an emblem when he started the company in 1963. McLaren still treats it as a direct line back to its founder, which is why it keeps popping up whenever the brand wants to make a point about where it came from.
The bigger change is the name itself. McL 820 is the first series supercar to wear McLaren's new naming system, which pairs a McL prefix borrowed from its racing history with a number tied to performance. The idea, according to McLaren, is to bring the road cars and the race cars under one consistent structure, so what you buy from a showroom sounds like it's related to what runs at Le Mans.
We've already had a taste of it. The McL 6GT concept revealed at Monterey Car Week in August was the first car to carry the new prefix, a manual, V8 tribute to the M6GT road car Bruce never got to finish. On the racing side, McLaren's MCL-HY hypercar is set to line up in the World Endurance Championship in 2027, the same year the McL 820 lands.
It's a cleaner system than what came before, which bounced between numbers like 750S and standalone names like Artura. Whether buyers will warm to a supercar that sounds a bit like a model code is another question, but McLaren is clearly betting the racing link is worth more than a catchy name.
There's no word yet on Australian timing or pricing. That'll matter to a small but committed crowd here, including one Melbourne retiree who drove his 750S 16,000kms around the entire country. It'll matter to Artura owners too, given how well that car handles daily life and how soon it's bowing out.
McLaren says the full details will be revealed in 2027. Until then, all we've got is a number, a new naming system and a very large bird.
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