McLaren takes on Ferrari and Lamborghini in supercar race

Ron Dennis likes winning and is not shy about it. There is more silverware in the car-strewn “boulevard” outside his office than in the Manchester United boardroom.

Even the tacky cups are on display — two in the shape of giant sherry bottles. But there won’t be any more baubles for a bit. Dennis, who quit Formula One in April after his McLaren team was embroiled in one of the worst scandals in the sport’s history, has a new goal. The king of the pit lane wants to be king of the fast lane.

Dennis, 62, is sinking the millions he made with McLaren, whose drivers include world champion Lewis Hamilton, into a new firm, McLaren Automotive. He believes it will create the best sports car in the world, outclassing Ferrari and Lamborghini.

“It has an iconic design, like the E-type Jaguar and, on all performance parameters and price, will be better than our competition,” he said.

The MP4-12C — which will be formally unveiled on Wednesday — is a small, wedge-shaped two-seater with a high-revving V8 engine, a seven-speed gearbox, a carbon-fibre chassis and “gullwing” doors that open upwards, not outwards.

So far, so supercar.

There’s more than meets eye, though, with this roadgoing racer, designed by former Ferrari design director Frank Stephenson. Dennis and his engineers have used F1 expertise to achieve several firsts.

The MP4-12C boasts automatic variable rate suspension. At low speeds, the suspension is soft “to prevent the jaw-jarring experience you get in most sports cars if you hit a pothole at slow speed”, Dennis said. But, as the car accelerates, the suspension automatically stiffens to create a thrilling — and safe — ride.

Park it next to your house and you can use wireless internet to download MP3 music files, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and Google maps with driving directions from your computer to the car.

There are some neat design features, too. Sit in the driving seat and the dashboard seems to float in front of you. Because the engine sits behind you, there is no central drive shaft separating driver and passenger, giving playboys the chance to play footsie with their girlfriends at 200mph.

McLaren Automotive was spun off from McLaren Group, which runs the F1 team, this year. The firm is half-owned by Mumtalakat, the £5 billion private-equity arm of the Bahrain government, which has a 30% stake in McLaren Group. The remaining half is split between Dennis and TAG, the Swiss engineering and technology firm.

Dennis and his partners have spent upt to £100m. Ranked 648th in The Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of £87m, Dennis is close to announcing a further £300m investment that will enable him to build a new factory alongside McLaren’s headquarters near Woking, Surrey. The fresh cash is expected to come from Bahrain and wealthy individuals in the Gulf and Asia. The car will go on sale in 2011.

Launching a car that will cost about £150,000 during the deepest recession in decades has prompted critics to ask whether Dennis is a few cogs short of a gearbox. To make matters worse, he is entering the supercar market at a time when Audi, Aston Martin, Bentley, Porsche, Bugatti and even Ford have joined the go-faster sector.

Dennis concedes that sales of fancy cars have fallen but insists the sector has not been as badly affected by the crunch as the market overall.

“There were 125,000 cars in our segment of the market sold in 2007. It has shrunk but not by the kind of 40% drop that we’ve seen in other sectors,” he said. “It’s going back up again already. It will be back above 100,000 in two years.”

Dennis believes sales will be so strong he will be able to go on from the MP4-12C to create a stable of thoroughbred English racers. “We’re building more than a car. we’re building a brand.” Two new two-seaters will be launched by 2015: one smaller model, to go nose to nose with the Porsche 911, and one bigger, to compete with the Porsche Carrera GT. The production target is 1,000 cars in the first year, rising to 4,000 as new models are introduced.

Dennis is so fired up about his new baby it is hard to believe that just a few months ago his career seemed to be in tatters. He severed all ties with F1 after Hamilton was exposed as lying to race stewards following the Australian grand prix in March.

But he has not turned his back on motor sport. “We’ll enter racing championships with racing variants of this car,” he said. If Dennis’s track record is anything to go by, there may be more cups to add to his collection, after all.