McLaren's 788HS Is the V8's Last Dance, and Only 200 Get In

McLaren just gave its twin-turbo V8 supercar a proper send-off: 200 cars, 777 horsepower, and a badge the brand almost never hands out.

On the morning of July 9, 2026, McLaren rolled a new car onto the lawn at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and quietly closed a chapter. The 788HS is the last hurrah for the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 that has powered the Super Series since the 720S landed in 2017, and the company is happy to call it the "definitive and final evolution" of that family.

It is also the first all-new McLaren in nearly two years, and only the third road car ever to wear the HS, or High Sport, designation. That badge goes on the rarest, most extreme cars the company builds, so you can guess roughly where this one sits.

Where the 788 actually comes from

The name is math. The M840T 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 makes 788 PS, and 788 PS is where the badge comes from. Translated for a US audience, that is 777 bhp at 7,500 rpm, alongside 590 lb-ft of torque arriving at 5,500 rpm. The engine spins all the way to 8,500 rpm before it runs out of road.

To find that extra muscle over the 750S, McLaren went after the internals: lightweight forged pistons, ultra-low-inertia twin-scroll turbochargers, and twin fuel pumps feeding the V8. The net gain works out to roughly 37 hp over the 750S. That does not sound dramatic on paper until you factor in the weight this car leaves behind.

The figures that matter

Spec	Figure	Note
EngineM840T	4.0L twin-turbo V8	777 bhp / 788 PS
Torque	590 lb-ft	at 5,500 rpm
0–60 mph	2.8 sec	0–124 mph in 7.0 sec
Top speed	205 mph	revs to 8,500 rpm
Dry weight	1,265 kg	≈ 2,789 lb
Power-to-weight	623 PS/tonne	class-leading in the 720S family

That power-to-weight figure (roughly 614 hp per tonne) is the highest of any car derived from the 720S platform, McLaren says, which puts the 788HS above the 750S and 765LT that came before it.

Two hundred cars, split down the middle

You will not stumble across one of these at a dealer. McLaren is building exactly 200 examples, divided evenly into 100 coupes and 100 open-top Spiders, and every one is shaped through McLaren Special Operations so owners can personalise the car to their own taste. The run is being offered directly to invited clients rather than through the usual order books.

The HS story is part of the pitch. McLaren says the High Sport name returns here for only the third time in the company's history, a designation it keeps back for its most extreme series-production supercars. Accounts of exactly which earlier cars carried it vary between outlets, so we will let McLaren's own framing stand: this is a badge the brand rarely reaches for.

When you can get one, and what it costs

First deliveries are expected in the second half of 2026, following the Goodwood debut. Pricing is the part McLaren has not put on the record. Reports place it somewhere in the £300,000s, which lands north of roughly $400,000 before options and local taxes, but treat that as an estimate rather than a confirmed sticker until McLaren says otherwise. With the whole run already spoken for through Special Operations, the list price was never really the point.

What is confirmed is the timing of what comes next. The 788HS is positioned as a bookend before McLaren's next powertrain era, making it the last celebration of this V8 in this generation of Super Series cars.