Words: Robin Swithinbank
You have to admire McLaren. This week its Automotive division announced a £1bn project called Track 22 that will run for the next six years, see the introduction of 15 new road cars (including derivatives) and bump production up from the current high of 1,600 cars a year to 5,000. In the process, the Woking-based manufacturer will create 500 new jobs. The British supercar company has its foot planted firmly on the accelerator.
McLaren Automotive (sister company to the flagging F1 team) clearly expects to sell those 5,000 units. Considering its entry-level car (if we can call it that) currently costs upwards of £140,000, that’s some serious ambition – and some serious potential business.
Question is then – will it?
Last week, I went to Geneva to road test the McLaren 650S and 570S, the latter being the baby in the line-up and the first car in McLaren’s Sports Series. A baby, that is, with a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 engine that coughs up 570ps (562bhp) and can flash from 0-124mph in 9.5 seconds. And that has a slightly bigger footprint than the 650S. Babyish like Superman’s baby, then.
Let’s get straight to the point, here. These are astonishingly capable cars. Mother Nature decided that for our road trip from Geneva to Lausanne and back that she would do everything in her power to trip them up (and bury our chances of having any fun) by bombarding our route in a deluge of snow, sleet and rain. The conditions were frankly abysmal, but they did at least provide an opportunity to find out just how stable these cars are, and, I suppose, whether they can claim to have any ‘real world’ quality – which the 570S in particular does.
At the wheel, you get a lot of toys. Both share McLaren’s Active Dynamics Panel that gives you the option to manipulate the handling and power train set-ups, moving from ‘Normal’ into ‘Sport’ and then ‘Track’. Driving the 650S, I found myself opting for the third of those early on in our journey, despite the slippery conditions. We boys do like to have a little fun.
Despite that, I must admit to driving the thing a bit like my mother-in-law drives her Yaris. At one point, pushing it up a hill as much as I dare and with the thermometer only just hovering above zero, we suddenly came on a sheet of water running across the road and the threat of aquaplaning into a wall and down the side of a mountain became a touch too real. The car (which was on winter tyres) didn’t flinch – but I did.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried. The 650S has the Brake Steer system developed for McLaren’s F1 team (that’s long-since been banned) that carries you through the corners with more control at speed; an Airbrake that pops up when you pump the carbon ceramic brakes; Proactive Chassis Control that firms up the suspension when required; and a super-stiff carbon fibre MonoCell that weighs just 75kg. This is a car that’s not threatened by being driven by a lifestyle journalist through the Swiss mountains in the middle of the local winter.
When the opportunity arose to open the cars up, they were brutally, clinically, spleen-compressingly quick. The delivery of the 570S’s power, even on wet, slippery roads, was astonishing. It was like being fired at by a water canon – the power just kept coming, pushing on and on so that there was nothing you could do to get away from it. Apart from take your foot off the accelerator, of course. Of the two, the 570S was noticeably louder – the power seemed rawer, like being hit on the back of a head with a spade as opposed to a baseball bat.
But if you know McLaren, you’ll already know that its cars are fast and clever. And you’ll have grasped that the company’s reputation for making avant-garde cars with space-age tech and otherworldly performance is what’s got it to where it is now. But 5,000 cars a year? That’s a big leap. That means there are a lot of would-be Aston, Lambo and Ferrari drivers out there who are going to turn their noses up at years and years of heritage and brand equity, and instead go for the upstart.
The challenge for McLaren isn’t to convince us that cars like the 650S and the 570S are good – that’s easy. The challenge is to convince us that they offer driveway satisfaction, as well as early-adopter kicks.
They’re on the way. The real test for any supercar is whether a kid would put a poster of one on his wall, or put the Matchbox toy at the front of his make-believe garage. Driving into Lausanne, we hit school-time lunch hour. And the kids waved and shouted and pointed and grinned at our McLaren as if it were Cristiano Ronaldo. Or Lady Gaga. Or whoever it is kids these days get excited about. I’d bet it was the highlight of their day. It could also be the making of McLaren.
For more information about the McLaren 650S and 570S, visit Mclaren
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