For car enthusiasts who also love fast jets, this could be the collaboration you’ve been dreaming of. McLaren Automotive is already known for building some of the fastest cars on the planet. Now, the UK company is teaming up with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to suss out new ways of designing supercars of the future.

Anyone with a modicum of aviation knowledge needs no introduction to the Skunk Works. For others, you’ve likely heard of the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II, F-117 Stealth Fighter, U-2 spy plane, or the SR-71 Blackbird. If those aircraft names and designations are still a tad fuzzy, you might recognize the sleek jet in the photo gallery below, posing with a new McLaren Artura. That’s the Darkstar, a conceptual hypersonic jet designed by Lockheed’s Skunk Works that appeared in the opening scenes of Top Gun: Maverick – the highest-grossing movie of 2022 at $1.48 billion.

What exactly does this collaboration entail? McLaren doesn’t offer details, which ironically falls right in step with the plethora of secret projects handled by the Skunk Works over the course of several decades. The focus of this partnership is to morph the aerospace company’s design software into something that can be applied to supercars, with an eye toward high-speed automotive systems. Considering the SR-71 Blackbird still holds the world absolute speed record for an air-breathing combustion machine at 2,193 mph (Mach 3.3), we’re wondering what kind of insane…