Why Lanzante's Members' Meeting demo will be unmissable

Pronounced ‘ninety-five – fifty-nine', the car, revealed at the 2025 Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Lanzante’s Le Mans 24 Hours victory with the McLaren F1 GTR, will take the next step on its development journey in April. Ahead of the 95-59's public debut at Members’ Meeting, we were given access to the car in its current form, including a high-speed demonstration, at the Goodwood Motor Circuit.

From the outside, it’s still unmistakeably a McLaren 750S, albeit with some pretty major modifications visible towards the rear end to cater for the bespoke exhaust, but it all feels rather different as you lower yourself inside. 

That recognisable bodywork has been lowered onto Lanzante’s new chassis. A central driver's seat, on this occasion taken up by test driver Edward Sandström, is flanked by two passenger births positioned behind the driver’s shoulders. All three of you are sat way down on the floor of the car, so even as a passenger you feel like you’re getting the full racing driver experience.  

We spoke to Dean Lanzante, the man behind it all, to find out more about the thinking that’s gone into the 95-59 and asked what inspired him to create a three-seat supercar. 

“Ultimately, I always try to build cars that I’d want to own myself,” he said. “That’s probably good for the product, but bad for the bottom line — my accountant will probably tell me to focus on that a little bit more. 

“It’s all driven by what I’d want out of a car. Having a very clear direction and not trying to penny pinch along the way. If you’re using the best people, the best technology and the best engineering you can, there’s nowhere further you can go."

Even at this early stage, the car we’ll see at Members’ Meeting is still very much a test mule and some way away from what we can expect from the finished product. That 'spare no expense' attitude is stark when you experience the thing in action. 

There’s no bracing for the savagery of the acceleration out of the pits. Little else will pull away with quite such urgency, and it just keeps on going. This was certainly one of the more alarming experiences we’ve had during the 300-metre run from pit exit to the braking point for Madgwick. 

Such eye-watering performance is thanks mostly to a new cooling system, which facilitates a substantial increase in the power output of the 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8. 

“Turbo engines inherently run with more power if they run cooler, the cost and attention that we put to that has been quite vast,” Lanzante explained, but the team hasn’t stopped there. 

“The other thing is the amount of weight that we’ve taken out of the car. We’re going to be around 1,250kg with fluids, and even the car that we’ve got here today that doesn’t have our carbon doors, doesn’t have our full carbon body, is just under 70kg lighter than a 750S already, we’ve got lighter wheels, our exhaust system’s made of Inconel and titanium.”

He added that the lightweighting could have gone further still by swapping out the double-clutch transmission for a manual gearbox, but even without that additional step the 95-59 is going to be an incredibly light machine. 

“Although the car we revealed at the Festival of Speed is quite clean and classic looking, it’s not all wings and scruffy aero, it’s really beneath the skin that the money’s been spent and the engineering skills have been applied. 

“It’s not just moving a seat to the centre, we’ve got a different steering rack, column positioning, all the electronics and plumbing, the suspension, our exhaust system, a lot of what’s underneath the wraps is being developed on this model.” 

The caveat with our initial experience with this car is that it’s not even finished yet. In its current form, which lacks the full carbon bodywork, it’s roughly 100kg heavier than what’s expected from the final product, and yet its performance through the corners is perhaps even more impressive than its speed in a straight line. 

We mentioned the approach to Madgwick, but its navigation of that intensely tricky double-apex right hander was astonishing. Even as a passenger, being sat so low in the car gives you a pretty good insight to how this car tackles a corner, and its capability was clear. 

Sandström was able to carry so much speed into each of Goodwood’s incredibly challenging turns. The run through the terrifyingly fast kink at Fordwater was scarcely believable, with just the merest hint of a lift through the kind of corner that, for all but the most experienced and skilled drivers, often induces an involuntary lean on the brake pedal. 

Likewise at St. Mary’s, a place where it’s easy for a car to be thrown off-balance by a tricky braking zone and a substantial compression, the 95-59 was settled and secure as Sandström coaxed it into the only proper left-hander on the circuit. 

We didn’t have a stopwatch running, but we imagine the results would have been pretty striking if we had. 

What’s most impressive about all this though, is that outright speed isn’t even the focus of the 95-59 project. Lanzante said the likes of the McLaren Speedtail and more recently the GMA T.50, cars similarly inspired by the McLaren F1, were key influences when considering what the 95-59 should become, but not perhaps for the reasons you might expect. 

“I’ve been fortunate to be involved with the F1 ever since the start of the project and obviously running the car at Le Mans, there’s always been this fascination with that,” Lanzante said.  

“I’ve also been fortunate to drive a lot of these cars, and the central seating position is like nothing else; it gives an experience even at slow speed, it’s a unique sensation.  

“We always had an idea of making a three-seater car but actually building something that was maybe less precious than those predecessors,” he explained. “We wanted a usable car, and when I say we, this has been fed by clients. 

“People are saying ‘we’ve got all these special cars, we want something that’s got more of a wider operating angle.’ That’s coupled together with it not having a hybrid or a complex battery system, and still retaining range, luggage capacity, having a sensible level of comfort and sound deadening within the car, and just really being properly usable. 

“On top of that, in a world of evermore complex cars we’re trying to do something that has relatively low maintenance costs and is relatively trouble free. There's a lot of engineering that goes into that because we’re in an arms race of development, lap time, top speed, so instead of chasing those we’ve tried to focus on other goals.” 

He’s taken some inspiration from the rise of the restomod, the idea that a car can be fun and engaging for different reasons besides the headline power figure. 

“It’s getting cars that people love the look of,” he said, "making them more usable, more reliable and have those creature comforts that people expect today.” 

On a basic level, that means the fuel tank remains the same size as what you get in a standard McLaren 750S, but luggage capacity is actually expected to be more, despite the car itself being both smaller and lighter. 

There’s also a huge interest these days in bespoke specification, and Lanzante wants to give drivers the opportunity to shape their own experience. The first job will be to finish building all 59 cars, a two-year process that will begin in 2027, but then customers will be able to bring their cars back to the factory to request any updates they desire.

Already on the wish list are things like roof scoops, high downforce kits and centre-lock wheels, but Lanzante is keen to get the cars built first before considering that level of modification.

From what we’ve seen of the 95-59, anyone who’s lucky enough to have their name down for one of these is going to be taking ownership of a spectacular car. There’s little else we’ve ever experienced that can complete a lap of the Goodwood Motor Circuit quite as quickly as this, and it’s going to be a moment to enjoy when it makes its way out on track during the 83^rd Members’ Meeting.

The 83^rd Members' Meeting presented by Audrain Motorsport takes place on the 18^th & 19^th April 2026. Tickets are limited, with only Sunday admission remaining. Saturday tickets, weekend passes and grandstand passes are now sold out. 

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Photography by Max Carter and Toby Whales.