English Breakfast – The McLaren MP4-12C
All jobs have perks. Bartenders get free drinks, accountants get to play with abacuses and fire fighters get to pump iron and shoot calendars.
Well, very early the other morning I had one such moment at my work: it was from the UK, orange, and sporting a 442kW twin-turbo 3.8-litre V8 – the McLaren MP4-12C.
Anyone ‘into’ cars would be thrilled to be up close and personal with a car like the Mac4. Huge power, massive status symbol and filled to the brim with technology.
From the custom McLaren-built motor and seven-speed paddle-shifted gearbox to the aero-brake and ‘brake steer’ system that will brake individual wheels to make faster cornering possible, this thing is most definitely a tech-box.
But that’s part of why I remained (despite trying really hard) not overly excited about its presence at the office. Cool car but not one that gets my tail wagging. I’m a three-pedal guy, we all know this. I’ll admit, I didn’t get to steer the British supercar so my mind could still be changed but I did land a passenger hot-lap around the block, so still good.
The car does look way better in the flesh than in any pictures or video I’d seen before and it sounds better than I thought it would. The attention to detail inside and out is glaringly obvious too. It is indeed one shmick unit.
Plenty quick but not scary-fast, it stops, turns and rides all really nicely. Worth the nearly $500,000? Probably not, considering you could get one of several other mint cars plus a house with a driveway to park it in for that sort of cash, but a cool car all the same.
If I do manage a drive of something else from the upper echelons of the car universe, you ShiftUp kids will be the first to know.
Dave
Note: Yes, I was in my monkey pajamas as it was far too early in the morning to be in anything else.
Shift Up 