New McLaren 625C on the way – is this P13 or a re-badged McLaren 12C

The McLaren 625C is about to arrive, but is the 625C the much anticipated, lower-priced P13 or is it a refresh for the McLaren 12C? We should find out at Pebble Beach.

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What is the McLaren 625C?

It’s a good question, but a very good source tells us that it’s already built and is likely to debut at Pebble Beach later this month. But is it a new McLaren or a re-badged, titivated, 12C?

When McLaren launched the 650S we said we expected it to sound the death-knell for the McLaren 12C. What would be the point of having two cars in the McLaren range so closely related in terms of power and performance? Surely one would just cannabalise sales from the other?

That feeling, we thought, was confirmed by McLaren’s announcement that they stopped producing the 12C to concentrate on the 650S. But maybe we were wrong to take a halt in production as the end of the 12C.

We know McLaren has built the 625C, but we don’t know what its spec is or how it looks. Logically, as the 12C had 625PS, we would expect it to be a re-worked 12C, perhaps with a lower technical spec and pitched somewhere below the 650S’s price. But, just as we thought when McLaren launched the 650S, that doesn’t make much marketing sense.

Could the 625C in fact be the long-awaited P13, the McLaren aimed at a lower price point to take on the Porsche 911 Turbo and Audi R8?

If it is, 625PS seems an awful lot more power than we’d expected, and unless McLaren makes it a lot less desirable in the spec department, we can’t see that making much sense either.

So, count us confused. But the McLaren 625C is for real and will debut very soon – probably at Pebble Beach.