McLaren 12C
sports car designed and manufactured by British automobile manufacturer McLaren Automotive

The McLaren MP4-12C, later rebranded as the McLaren 12C, is a sports car produced by the British carmaker McLaren Automotive. Manufactured between 2011 and 2014, the MP4-12C was available as both a coupe and a retractable hard-top convertible, the latter known as the "Spider".
The 12C marked McLaren's return to production car sales for the first time since 1998, when the F1 ceased production. Development began in 2005, and the car made its online debut in September 2009 as the MP4-12C. McLaren began series manufacturing the car in February 2011 at the company's facility in Woking, Surrey. The 12C Spider debuted in July 2012.
Production ended in April 2014 with more than 3,400 units manufactured. It was succeeded by the 650S, with which the 12C shares most of its components.
The 12C has a carbon fibre composite chassis and a turbocharged V8 engine that generates a power output of 453 kilowatts (607 bhp) and a torque output of 600 newton-metres (440 lbf⋅ft).
Name
The McLaren Formula One team has used the "MP4" prefix as its chassis designation since 1981. This acronym stands for "McLaren Project 4", which originated from the merger of Ron Dennis' organisation, Project Four Racing, with McLaren.
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This entry incorporates text from “McLaren 12C” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.