This Beautiful Speedboat From McLaren’s Design Boss Is All Electric

Feast your eyes on this beautiful 31-foot mahogany and rosewood speedboat. No, it doesn’t have a Chevy V8, or the V10 from a Dodge Viper, but this most recent creation from Frank Stephenson, the design director for McLaren, has a 4.2-kilowatt electric motor and a bank of eight 12-volt batteries good for silent river cruising over a 10-hour journey.

Image via The Drive

The basis of the boat is a 20-year-old, 9.5-metre wooden shell, in African rosewood and Brazilian mahogany, with 15 coats of lacquer laid on at its construction and another five every year after that. Of course, it isn’t quite as powerful as the Cigarette AMG Electric Drive Concept, but it’s certainly more attractive.

There’s even a mermaid hood ornament on the prow, taken from a 1932 Cadillac. The boat can charge at Stephenson’s home in Henley-on-Thames, or at any dock with a charging point along the river to the Cotswolds, so there’s no worry about running out of juice along the way. It’s not a balls-out F1 Powerboat, but it looks perfect for a quiet, sedate, relaxed day on the water.

The Drive has an in-depth look at the history of the boat, and of other wooden, ’60s-era watercraft like it; this is what you get when the designer of cars like the Ferrari F430 and the McLaren 570S turns his hands to on-water pursuits. [The Drive via Autoblog]


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