MCLAREN GT
Did our man’s maiden Mclaren voyage live up to expectations?
You might or might not be surprised to hear that not everyone at Autocar gets to sample every new car we test. No, the priciest and most powerful are usually exclusively for the road test team. So until recently, my sole experience of a Mclaren was five minutes I spent trapped inside a stationary Senna, as no one thought to tell me the door release was in the ceiling. A week with our long-term GT would surely make amends.
Once you’re past the sheer presence of a mid-engined supercar whose dihedral doors open upwards, the most striking thing about the GT is how bespoke it all feels. The Audi R8 greets you with an interior that isn’t massively different from that of the TT, or really any other Audi. Gone are the days of Mclarens sharing wing mirrors with Volkswagens and brake lights with buses – although saying that, the ultra-thick windscreen wiper could easily have come from one. Must it be built like scaffolding to cope with the car’s top speed?
I can’t remember the last time I drove a car whose steering wheel was just for steering. The GT’S is entirely absent of all buttons, switches and (God forbid) touch-sensitive surfaces, relegating the cruise control and dial-cluster controls to stalks below the indicator and wiper ones. It looks slick, but it does mean having to hunt for some features we now take for granted as having at our fingertips.
Mclaren’s bespoke infotainment system is at least straightforward to find your way around, with buttons to jump between the sat-nav, climate and media. I’m not sure why a British car’s sat-nav insists on speaking in an American accent and measuring things in eighths of a mile, though.
My biggest bugbear is that the reversing camera appears in the dial cluster: sure, it would have to shrink to fit within the touchscreen, but it wouldn’t get blocked from view as soon as you turn the steering wheel.
Those quibbles aren’t enough to detract from the driving experience, which is sublime. The GT launches explosively under a heavy foot and gives incredibly responsive steering feel. It’s certainly more supercar than grand tourer, but it’s still impressively relaxed on a motorway and easy to slot into traffic in town.
In my week with the GT, I passed lots of Porsches, a few Aston Martins and Ferraris but no other Mclaren.
I won’t miss the fuel consumption, which dipped into single digits at one point, but the feeling of exclusivity it exudes will be hard to beat.