This McLaren Speedtail took MSO 12 WEEKS to paint

Welcome to McLaren Special Operations’ newest creation. Commissioned by McLaren Beverly Hills, ‘Albert’ is a one-off that pays tribute to the first “attribute testing prototype” Speedtail from 2018. 

Why Albert? Well – back in 1992 one of the original McLaren F1 test mules was christened Albert after Albert Drive, the road in Woking where McLaren was based at the time. In 2018 McLaren revived the name for the first Speedtail prototype – pictured at the bottom of this article. Originally fitted with a 720S front-end, it was the first Speedtail driven on public roads. 

The new car’s Magnesium Silver (the same colour as the first F1 show car) and Ueno Grey (the same colour as the F1 GTR that won Le Mans in 1995) livery is a tribute to Albert’s camouflage vinyl wrap, which was designed to represent the optimal airflow over the bodywork. McLaren tells us this is “one of the most complex paint themes ever completed by MSO”, and that it took a whopping 12 WEEKS to finish. 

Albert was originally built with a gloss carbon body, but on completion was immediately sent to MSO. First they spent two weeks masking (using over 2km of tape), then over the next six weeks the car was completely disassembled and painted. The remaining four weeks were spent reassembling. 

One of the last Speedtails built, Albert will make its debut at a cars & coffee event at Sunset Plaza in LA on 8 August.