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McLaren Automotive, the British luxury automaker known for its high-performance sports cars and supercars, has announced a partnership with aerospace company Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. The collaboration aims to explore the integration of aerospace technology into the design of supercars.
This partnership will allow McLaren to experiment with transferring design technology from aerospace to its hypercars. Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division is a team of aerospace experts responsible for creating some of the most advanced aircraft in the world, including the SR-71 Blackbird and the U2.
The team is also known for creating the Darkstar, the fictional hypersonic jet featured in the opening scenes of the 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick. In addition to using new state-of-the-art Skunk Works software, the partnership will allow McLaren to "tune" parameters for high-speed systems more precisely and faster than traditional design methods.
The specifics of the collaboration have not been released, but it is clear that this partnership has the potential to yield some exciting results. By combining the expertise of McLaren in the automotive industry with the advanced technology of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, the two companies aim to push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of supercars.
With the use of advanced software and the ability to fine-tune high-speed systems, it will be interesting to see what this partnership will bring to the world of automotive design.
McLaren Automotive's Chief Technical Officer, Darren Goddard, said:
"McLaren is a pioneering company that has always pushed boundaries and sought out new innovative and disruptive solutions to making the ultimate supercars.
Working alongside an iconic company such as Lockheed Martin Skunk Works®, renowned for their visionary focus on the future, is a natural fit. We hope this is the start of a longer and deeper collaboration that will benefit our customers in the long term." While it's hard to gauge the actual goal of the joint project from the press release, we can only assume that McLaren might try to take advantage of Lockheed Martin's advanced aerodynamic design development techniques and apply them to the automotive design realm.
With the rapid transition of the automotive industry towards electrification, the importance of aerodynamics has become even more important. Manufacturers are constantly looking for new ideas to come up with more aerodynamically efficient car designs. It's a critical step in the quest to get the most range out of electric vehicles.
