McLaren 650S

The McLaren 650S is one of the quickest and most capable cars on the road today, making it more than worth its £200,000 price tag. It strikes a perfect balance between the day-to-day usability of a Porsche 911 and the fun of a Ferrari. It’s a British supercar that can really take on the best in the world.

If you’re not one of the 375 lucky punters who bought a P1, then the McLaren 650S – which features tech and styling inspired by that car – makes for a pretty compelling alternative.

Since McLaren has now ceased production of the 12C, the 650S is your entry point to the range – albeit a 641bhp, £200,000 entry point.

The P1-style front end isn’t only for show, either. The 650S gets bigger radiators and side vents to help cool the engine more effectively, and the carbon front splitter generates 40 per cent more downforce above 150mph.

From behind the wheel it’s difficult to imagine a car faster than this. The 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 delivers everything it’s got shortly after you floor the throttle, and depending on your outlook it’s either terrifyingly quick or endlessly exhilarating. From a standing start, the 650S will cover 0-100mph in 5.7 seconds – the same time it takes a Porsche Cayman to do 0-62mph.

The engine hurtles towards the 9,000rpm red line so fast that the tacho needle struggles to keep up. However, you’d need to be at a race track to really appreciate the new level of performance the 650S has to offer. Corners rush up in a blur of noise, but through a series of challenging bends you can feel the effect of the tweaks to the suspension set-up.

McLaren has upped the stiffness of the suspension to help the 650S feel a fraction crisper through bends than the 12C. You can throw it into a tight corner fully expecting it to understeer, but the 650S just continues to grip. There’s a surprising amount of traction, too, so getting on the power early isn’t just going to send you in to a spin.

You might find a Ferrari 458 Speciale just that little bit more involving, but we reckon the McLaren would be quicker point-to-point and more comfortable too. A set of carbon-ceramic brakes now comes as standard and is great when you’re driving hard. Around town, though, you need to be firm on the pedal.

If you’re not concentrating while sitting in traffic, you can find yourself edging forwards as the engine overcomes the brakes. It’s a similar story with the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox, which is perfect at speed, but can hold gears too long or change up unexpectedly at city speeds.

But this McLaren is still surprisingly comfortable, with a high quality interior and a near-perfect driving position – its looks will draw more attention than almost anything else on the road too.

The elegant, simple cabin now has Alcantara trim, and there’s an extra-cost retractable wheel to make climbing in and out of the cockpit easier. There’s also a reversing camera, and fixed-back carbon fibre bucket seats based on those in the P1 hypercar are a must-have option.

Visibility is fantastic for a supercar, and the clarity of the driving environment – with a gorgeous, unadorned steering wheel – makes it easier to live with than you’d expect.

Key specs

• Price: £195,250
• Engine: 3.8-litre V8 twin-turbo
• Power: 641bhp
• Transmission: Seven-speed dual clutch auto, rear-wheel drive
• 0-62mph: 3.0 seconds
• Top speed: 207mph
• Economy: 24.2mpg
• CO2: 275g/km

McLaren 12C Spider

There are fast cars, and then there are cars like the McLaren 12C Spider. It feels like it's in a different league to a Porsche 911 or Audi R8 in terms of the way it accelerates and goes around corners. Incredibly, it's just as usable as those models - if not more so - which makes it an excellent car for using every day. Dynamically there are minimal compromises compared with the coupe, and despite the near-£20,000 premium it commands, there's very little to stop you opting for the Spider. Simply put, the 12C Spider is one of the best convertibles ever built.

The McLaren 12C Spider is one of Britain’s most exciting ever supercars, and we’ve finally had the chance to get behind the wheel of it on British soil.

The Spider uses the same carbon-fibre MonoCell chassis as the coupe model, which is so rigid that McLaren didn’t even need to strengthen the chassis when it removed the roof. The result is a car that the British manufacturer is promising feels just like the hardtop from behind the wheel.

You certainly won’t feel the extra 40kg added by the roof mechanism in the way this car accelerates. McLaren puts the 0-62mph time at 3.1 seconds – identical to the standard 12C – and the experience of getting up to that speed is unlike anything else on the road.

There’s an initial kick of acceleration as soon as you press the throttle, followed by an additional blast from the turbos in the mid-range, and then as you hit the outer edge of the rev counter and begin to think you can’t possibly accelerate any quicker, it hits you again. That all helps explain the 12C Spider’s scarcely believable 0-100mph time of 6.1 seconds.

Those incredible performance figures can be traced back to the Spider’s powertrain, which it shares with the coupe. It’s a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8, producing 616bhp, paired with an excellent seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox. The latter feels happy enough short-shifting up to seventh on a gentle cruise, or instantly banging through the gears during a hard-charging blast.

A cause for complaint has been the 12C’s engine noise, but the Spider’s is certainly the best McLaren currently offers. In isolation you’d call it spectacular, with a little turbo chirrup as you let off the throttle and a metallic growl, a rising whoosh and an explosion of pops and bangs on every full-throttle upshift. Compare it to the Ferrari 458 Spider, though, and you’ll have to concede the Ferrari’s high-pitched howl to be the most impressive.

With the retractable hard-top roof in place, everything is a little more muted but you can simply wind down the rear windscreen to hear more from the vocal V8. It’s best with the roof fully down, though, and that’s a process that takes just 17 seconds.

Just like on the coupe, McLaren gives drivers the choice of switching the handling and powertrain between Normal, Sport and Track settings. No matter which combination you pick, the 12C feels seriously impressive. The steering is fast and so natural to use that it quickly becomes second nature.

On our road drive the 12C excelled in every type of corner we could find, almost without body roll and showcasing huge amounts of grip. You really need to take to a track before you could find the 12C’s limits.

But it’s worth mentioning just how fantastic the 12C is on the road because of its usability. You really can just hop in and drive the Spider like any other car. It even rides incredibly well, not once crashing or thudding over bumps during our time with it.

The price for all all this is £195,500, which is £19,500 more than the coupe. It’s a big increase but one that McLaren should have no problem justifying, especially considering this is one of the most exhilarating convertibles ever made.

Key specs

• Price: £195,500
• Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8
• Power: 616bhp
• Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch, rear-wheel drive
• 0-62mph: 3.1 seconds
• Top speed: 202mph
• Economy: 24.2mpg
• CO2: 279g/km
• Equipment: Airbrake, active damping, xenon lights, keyless start, Bluetooth, cruise control

New McLaren 675LT 2015

 

New 675LT supercar offers P1 thrills for a quarter of the price.

 

Be in no doubt, the 675LT is a big leap forwards from the 650S – a car that was already right at the top of its class. It’s a textbook example of how removing weight from a car adds ability in every other dimension. And when you mix such a reduction in mass with a series of other well judged improvements to the engine, chassis, steering, brakes and so on, you end up in a very good place indeed. And that’s precisely where the 675LT now sits. For the time being, it is king of the hill.

McLaren Automotive has come a long way in a short space of time, since the first 12Cs were unleashed upon the world in 2011. And of all the cars it has produced over those past four years, this new 675LT is arguably the most impressive of them all.

Why? Because although it may not contain as much technology or be quite as fast as the £1million P1, in reality it’s not that far behind. Yet it costs a quarter of the price of the P1, at ‘just’ £259,500, which might just explain why all 500 examples that McLaren will build over the next two years are now officially sold out.

We drove the car around Silverstone and on the roads surrounding Britain’s most famous GP circuit last week, and after half a day at the wheel realised that McLaren isn’t exaggerating when it says the 675 is “closer to the P1 dynamically than it is to the 650S”. And remember, the 650S was itself a huge leap forwards in every dimension compared with the original 12C.

Power from the now familiar-but-modified 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 rises by 25bhp to 666bhp (or 675PS – hence the first part of the car’s name). The LT tag stands for “long tail”, in homage to the F1 GTR long tails developed for GT racing in the late nineties.

Torque has also gone up to 700Nm, but the biggest upgrade of all is what’s no longer there; thanks to an extensive weight-saving programme, the 675LT is a full 100kg lighter than the 650S.

Mate this with those small but significant increases in power, plus a wider track front and rear, stiffer springs, a 20mm drop in ride height and super-sticky new Pirelli Trofeo tyres, and it becomes a very different animal indeed.

On the road, the 675 retains a surprising degree of civility to its ride and general dynamics, despite its more focused intentions – so long as you select Normal for its electronic chassis set-up. This means it still offers a huge breadth of ability for this kind of car – more so than any rival, including the Ferrari 488 GTB.

Switch to Sport, however, and the stiffer suspension settings instantly make the 675 feel much more alive, but also busier beneath your backside. And if you then engage Sport for the drivetrain programme as well (the chassis and drivetrain have their own separate settings), the gearchange becomes faster and far more physical than before, the exhaust note even more guttural, the throttle response sharper and harder edged.

It really does deliver a Jekyll and Hyde kind of transformation. On track, the sharper steering rack and tweaked suspension give the 675 so much more turn-in bite and balance mid-corner compared with the 650S.

And down the straights, it felt a little bit ridiculous to be honest, with never-ending acceleration and even better stopping power, thanks partly to those new Trofeo tyres, whose sidewalls are stiffer and don’t allow so much squirm under heavy braking. And the lap time proved it. In the end, it was less than two seconds slower than the P1 by our casual calculations.

The level of acceleration is now borderline uncomfortable on the public road, no matter which of the various drive programmes you might have selected. There is still some lag from the V8 twin-turbo, but only in the last four of the seven forward gears. In third or below the response is pretty much instant, and when full boost arrives at around 4,300rpm, you really do need to be right on top of your game to deal with it.

The numbers say the 675 can get from 0-62mph in 2.9 seconds and from 0-124mph (200kmh) in just 7.9 seconds; this is a rear-wheel-drive car we are talking about, remember. But if anything, it feels even faster than those bare statistics suggest.

Top speed is 205mph, which is no more than competitive with its key rivals but, says McLaren, “we’re not really concerned about top speed”.

What the company will be concerned about is how the 675 stacks up beside Ferrari’s new 488 GTB, which costs a not insignificant £75,526 less. The answer is: very well indeed in all departments, even if the McLaren feels no faster than the Ferrari in a straight line.

Key specs

• Price: £259,000
• Engine: 3.8-litre V8, twin-turbo
• Power/torque: 666bhp/700Nm
• Transmission: Seven-speed automatic, rear wheel drive
• 0-62mph/top speed: 2.9 secs/205mph
• Economy/CO2: 24.2mpg/276g/km
• On sale: Now