The HDK, which stands for High Downforce Kit, is a special evolution of the Mercedes SLR McLaren built by the team at MSO (McLaren Special Operations). Only 12 are supposed to exist and #08 is easily the coolest one yet, painted to look like an old fighter plane.
The SLR HDK was launched in 2022, but it didn’t become famous until collector Manny Khoshbin ordered one. MSO took one of his 10 SLRs and gave it an all-white finish along with the performance upgrades. However, this HDK is even more special.
HDK 08 belongs to The Lee Collection in Perth, Australia. McLaren’s paint techs Gary Goodman and Gareth Jones worked countless hours to recreate the look of a weathered, scratched-up P-51 Mustang. Yes, this is real paint, inspired by one of the most famous warbirds of WWII. Over 1000 rivets had to be stenciled and painted onto the silver car, along with aggressive graphics like the shark mouth.
McLaren never publicly revealed the price of the SLR HDK, but according to Khoshbin, the conversion costs upwards of $350,000, and we’d imagine such a complex paint job might almost double the sum. Hagerty, meanwhile, claims the kit actually costs a lot more, upwards of ยฃ500,000. That’s on top of the standard SLR which you already have to own, worth about $320,000 right now. So we could be looking at a $1 million SLR HDK, possibly the most expensive and objectively unique one.
Beneath this amazing paint, the HDK hides many upgrades over the standard SLR, including new front and rear fascias, new side skirts, a lip spoiler, new wheel arches, new wheels, and a huge wing. Drivetrain upgrades include the suspension, steering, and a bypass valve in the side-exit exhaust which makes the 5.4-liter supercharged V8 sound like a real WWII fighter.
Jeremy Clarkson once said “When they were designing it, the guys from McLaren kept saying it sounds like a Spitfire. The guys from Mercedes said nein, nein, nein, it sounds like a Messerschmitt.”
The HDK sits 20mm lower and is 60mm wider than a regular SLK. That’s because the HDK is supposed to be a race car for the road. Its design is based on the 722 GT prototype, the last car designed while Gordon Murray was at McLaren, which borrowed the wheels, pedal box, and wing uprights from the F1 GTR race car.
