McLaren has announced a raft of changes to the MP4-12C which it hopes will address media criticism of the car.

The first change is to the styling, which McLaren say has been revised to look ‘more familiar’. In tandem with this major revision, the car will now be available only in red.

Inside, the previous unadorned steering wheel has been pointlessly festooned with confusing buttons whilst in the engine compartment a new facility has been introduced to allow the car to suddenly catch fire.

Finally, the McLaren badge has been revised so that it now incorporates a large equine animal in an upright posture and the car’s name has been simplified, retaining the number 4 but following it with the number 5 to reflect that it has over 500 horsepower and the number 8 to acknowledge the car’s cylinder count.

McLaren promise that all customer cars will be to the new spec and that the motoring media will be able to assess the revised model under circumstances of the factory’s choosing, accompanied by 37 of their engineers and a second, slightly lumpy sounding test car which, mysteriously, can only be used for straight line performance tests.

‘We think these far reaching changes will address all of the complaints we have seen from journalists,’ said a McLaren spokesman. ‘And if they criticise the car again, this time we will react in a laughably pompous and histrionic way by throwing a big hissy fit and then banning them from talking about our products ever again’.