MCLAREN 570GT MSO CABBEEN COLLECTION REVEALED AT BEIJING MOTOR SHOW
McLaren has revealed a new bespoke 570GT at the Beijing Motor Show, created by McLaren Special Operations (MSO) in collaboration with Chinese fashion designer Ziming Yang, known professionally as Mr. Cabbeen.
This is a very "odd" collaboration in that it combines the pinnacle of modern European supercars with a taste of Chinese bling. The car is mostly stock but with a few custom handmade changes to the visual aspect. It sure does make this McLaren 570GT quite unique though. Black and gold usually go very well together, but there will be no other choice of colour on these limited MSO Cabbeen editions. Its not necessarily a bad thing, and nor does it look too bad either.
Called the 570GT Cabbeen Collection, a production run of five examples of the car is planned, boasting what McLaren claims are “distinctive Chinese classic design elements”. It’s the latest in a long series of unique MSO modified McLarens.
The most obvious modifications are the dragon motifs on the doors and hidden in the air vents. Contrasting with the Obsidian Black metallic paint, the dragons are hand painted in gold and match up with new 15-spoke alloy wheels, also finished in the same Speedline Gold colour. The detail on the golden dragons in the air vents are incredibly highly detailed, one can't imagine that they were painted by hand and not by some machine. The gold dragons and wheels contrast well with the back body paint and present quite a nice balance that is surely not over the top.
The gold dragon motifs are found in the cabin too. One is found on the Alcantara centre console, embroidered into the material beneath the infotainment system, while another one is found on the rear luggage deck.
No mechanical revisions are made – the 570GT Cabbeen Collection cars receive purely visual changes. As such, the same 3.8-litre, twin-turbocharged McLaren power unit producing 562bhp and 600Nm of torque is mounted behind the driver and passenger but ahead of the rear axle, sending power to the rear wheels via a seven-speed dual clutch automatic gearbox.
No prices or limited edition figures are available as yet. But I can assure you that these McLarens are going to be sold very quickly as more of a collector's piece than anything else. Let us know in the comments what your thoughts are? Should they have at least done more engine or performance upgrades or should it have been left as a fashion statement like it was intended?