McLaren Special Operations deals itself a winner with the Las Vegas-inspired Project Viva

This is Project Viva, the newest unique machine to emerge from McLaren Special Operations. There is a lot going on in this all-in homage to Las Vegas, created ahead of this month’s Las Vegas Grand Prix and intended to showcase the multifaceted talents of the MSO team.

With body art that contains a veritable basket of Easter Eggs, we can’t hand on heart call the Project Viva an aesthetic success, especially as the 750S starts life as a very beautiful, purist kind of supercar. The scattering of gambling and race-related imagery covers every square inch of the complex carbon fibre surfacing, from dice to cards, the race grid to the roulette table. There are also plenty of nods to the city’s history and identity, as well as the signatures of McLaren’s F1 drivers and nods to the team’s many successes.

This particular car probably won’t spin a (regular) wheel in anger, ending up as a prized item in someone’s collection, but MSO isn’t just about the application of dazzle-pattern like artwork. To find out more about MSO, we dived deep into the world of the McLaren owner and even got to sample the MSO process in person.

A big day out at Pure McLaren Silverstone

Like almost all high-end car makers, McLaren has a thriving community driven by activities and experiences, not just the simple act of ownership. One of the key dates in the McLaren calendar is Pure McLaren Silverstone, a gathering beneath the kinky-roofed grandstand and fast-cornering track of the famous home to the British Grand Prix. For a fee, owners can take their car on track, receive one-on-one tuition from a professional coach and generally bask in the McLaren experience.

If you’re lucky enough to own a track-only McLaren, the day is expanded to take in input from the company’s technical team, in addition to coaching and all-round immersion into the McLaren world.

Owners have been known fly their cars in from around the world to experience this track, and the car park is a rippling sea of jazzy colours and carbon fibre accoutrements. Black and orange are still the dominant aesthetic, as is technical sportswear bearing the swoopy McLaren crest.

Ultimately, Pure McLaren is Comicon for the Uber wealthy, only the superpower they are cosplaying is the ability to drive really, really fast. Some even dress the part, with their own race suits, shoes and helmets, a carefully assembled costume that mimics their icons in Formula 1 or endurance racing.

Just like Comicon, it’s a community of like-minded people, lured by similar tastes and interests and cemented by their spending ability. It’s a chance to explore the brand’s greatest hits and see what’s coming next, as well as explore the limits of their very, very fast cars on Silverstone’s famously quick circuit.

A supercar is designed to be seen in as well as driven, but the assembly of so many dramatis personae slightly diminishes the effect of a single McLaren against a backdrop of regular traffic. So how can this (largely male) community express itself above and beyond the ‘standard’ machine?

This is where McLaren Special Operations comes in. As the company’s in-house granter of over-and-above requests from owners, from special paint colours all the way through to unique, one-off cars, MSO will happily push the boundaries of taste in the pursuit of customer satisfaction.

Jonathan Simms is the new head of MSO, having joined the company from another British manufacturer with a long history of elaborate customisation. This is Simms’s first Pure event since joining the company and it’s given him and his team an opportunity to showcase MSO’s skills.

Wallpaper* specs its own (virtual) W1 hypercar with McLaren Special Operations

Today’s canvas is the McLaren W1, the newest member of McLaren’s Ultimate Series of multi-million-pound, limited-edition hypercars. Just 399 are being made, all of which are spoken for, and all of which involve some level of MSO involvement. Luckily for us, today we can pretend to be putting down a hefty deposit and get walked through MSO’s specification tool to conjure up our dream W1.

‘A McLaren is a statement of passion,’ Simms acknowledges, explaining that MSO’s role is not just to elevate levels of personalisation but also to give customers a greater insight and involvement into the process.

More often than not, they’ll visit the MSO operations centre, counterintuitively located on a nondescript Woking industrial estate that’s a far cry from the architectural precision and drama of the Foster-designed McLaren Technology Centre and factory. ‘We do find that a lot of clients love our location,’ says Simms, adding that it seems to lift the lid on the company’s ‘skunkworks’.

The MSO team typically come from McLaren’s design and engineering divisions, so they know full what’s possible and what’s not, as well as having an innate sense of style, colour and sophistication.

‘Before we meet them, the bespoke relationship manager will have developed an idea of what their clients might want,’ says Simms, ‘although very often what tends to happen is that a client comes to us with something outrageous and apparently unachievable.’ MSO’s job is to divine what exactly has inspired the request and work out a way to make it happen.

Actual one-off cars are much rarer beasts, with one emerging from MSO every 2 to 3 years or so. Perhaps 75 per cent of all such enquiries don’t actually proceed, perhaps unsurprisingly given the enormous investment required to re-body a car. ‘We always want people to have something that is a genuine part of McLaren’s history,’ Simms says, and the team is constantly liaising with design and engineering to explore what’s possible. That’s not to say that MSO can’t move mountains.

From the outset, the W1 was designed to be enormously reconfigurable, with bodywork, panels and sections of interior trim and detailing that can all be individually specified. It’s an infinite decision tree, and one that requires careful navigation. ‘We recognise that what we do is make the car more usable for a specific person and use case,’ says Simms, ‘we don’t need to interfere with aerodynamics or A-surfaces.’

While a relationship manager is essential on the more complex jobs, many clients come to MSO via their local dealership. The tools of the trade are a sophisticated visualisation system that generations an image of the W1in real time, allowing colour and material combinations to be explored before a set of bespoke renders are created.

It’s a system that doesn’t just benefit clients. ‘MSO is a car designer’s dream,’ says Simms, ‘they can put pen to paper and have a car specification completed in six months, not three years.’ At any one time, around 30 to 40 cars are in build at the MSO HQ, ranging from full restorations through to the application of custom graphics.

When it comes to our turn to specify a (hypothetical) W1, we take the aesthetic high road – not for us the Day-Glo ‘Papaya’ orange or gaudy graphics. Instead, the car shown here is a symphony of sober colours, with subtle blue bodywork and aero combined with a tan leather interior. For brightwork and technical details we’ve gone for polished bronze, while the wheels are nicely understated with a dark finish.

In conclusion? As thrifty-minded (virtual) billionaires, we’re hoping the spec doesn’t add too much more to the W1’s £2m starting price, nor will it impact the inevitable increase in value that accompanies all of McLaren’s Ultimate Series models.

The next few years will see McLaren double down on the extremely profitable activities of MSO whilst it also upgrades and consolidates its production car line-up. Right now, the company is riding high in the world of motorsport, with McLaren-Mercedes winning its second consecutive Constructors' Championship (and tenth overall) and Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri currently sitting in first and second place in the drivers’ championship (although there’s still a lot to play for).

On the road, things are a little less successful, with sales dipping and losses mounting. Somewhere deep in the heart of the MTC a comeback plan is being formulated, and rumour has it that it’s shaped a little bit like an SUV.

Whether this new car will damage or merely dent the supercar-maker image McLaren Automotive has worked so hard to cultivate remains to be seen. Whatever the outcome, MSO will still be able to make it even more outrageous.

Cars.McLaren.com

MSO McLaren Special Operations

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