I’ve driven a lot of stupidly fast cars at Jalopnik this year. Stuff like the Lucid Air Sapphire, Chevrolet Corvette, Maserati GranCabrio Folgore and Bentley Continental GT Speed come to mind, but none of those cars have altered my brain chemistry and changed my DNA as the McLaren 750S did. You see, it’s not the fact that it can hit 60 mph from a standstill in a Car and Driver–tested 2.3 seconds, or the fact that it can hit 206 mph on a straight bit of road. It’s the fact that if you put your foot down in fifth gear, the rear tires will spin as you’re rocketed from one ungodly speed to the next.
The 750S will change the way you think about cars, the way you think about speed. Keep in mind, I haven’t even discussed the way it goes around corners or how it actually makes for a rather great GT car. This bright orange McLaren looks and feels like something from out of this world, and with an over $420,000 as-tested price, it may as well have been.
Full Disclosure: McLaren lent me a 750S to do with as I pleased for a long weekend.
At the center of the McLaren 750S — both literally and figuratively — is a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 motor that McLaren has been tinkering with and perfecting since its progenitor was first introduced with the MP4-12C back in 2011. In this application, it pumps out 740 horsepower (30 more than the 720S it replaces) and 590 lb-ft of torque, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out those numbers are underrated. Regardless, all of that power is channeled to the rear wheels by a seven-speed Graziano dual-clutch transmission that shifts faster than my feeble mind can even think.
One of my favorite features of the 750S is that you can upshift and downshift from the same paddle, depending on whether you push or pull it, as both paddles are molded from the same piece of metal. Oh, and it weighs just a tick over 3,000 pounds. Put all of this together and you’ve got one fast sonofabitch, yet it somehow feels incredibly easy to drive. Of course, with a motor like that, it sounds amazing too, and it’ll make you want to leave the Bowers & Wilkens stereo off for your entire drive.
Sure, if you put your foot down in Sport or Track mode a little bit too enthusiastically, the rear of the car will want to meet the front and then you’ll be meeting God, but if you learn some restraint, it’s incredibly easy to drive — and to drive quickly. A lot of that is thanks in part to the sticky Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tires (245/35R19s up front and 305/30R20s out back), but it also comes down to how dynamically forgiving the car is and how its nannies let you have just the right amount of fun.
Still, though, it’s a beast. From a hard launch, you’ll be able to spin the tires in first, second, third, fourth and even fifth gear if it’s a tiny bit wet outside. You’d think that would be intimidating, but it really isn’t. This is the McLaren 750S’ world, and we’re just living in it. It doesn’t abide by our laws of physics, so there’s no need to worry about them.
Speaking of laws of physics, the 750S further spits in their face when it goes around corners. I’ve never driven anything that handles as well as this car. Its steering, while quite heavy, is incredibly direct and communicative, a benefit of being one of the last hydraulic setups on the market. The smallest adjustment put the car in a whole new direction, but somehow it didn’t feel twitchy in the slightest. Those British engineers, man. They’re something else. Cornering is obviously very flat, and you can carry tremendous speeds while doing so, thanks in part to the aforementioned tires as well as the active rear wing, which bobs up and down depending on your speed. It’s a lot of fun to watch out of the tiny rear window. This thing is really as enclosed to a road-going, V8-powered go-kart as you’re going to get.
Matching the absurd performance is an absurd exterior design. Sure, it isn’t much different than the 720S it replaces with some slight tweaks to the front and rear facias, but it still looks wild, especially with this one’s signature McLaren Orange paint job. Like all proper supercars, the doors go UP. I know it’s a bit showy, but I feel like it would be hard to get into the car if they didn’t. Plus, you bought an orange McLaren 750S, being subtle went out the door ages ago. If I had one gripe, it would be that you cannot really access the engine. You just sort of peer at it through the open-ish rear fascia and grilles. At least it’s lit up red at night.
The interior is equally as wacky looking as the exterior, but it also finds a way to be rather practical. For a gauge cluster, McLaren ditched the dual-screen rotating thing it had on the 720S for a more traditional single screen. The information it presents is very clear and easy to understand, and it changes its presentation depending on your drive mode (there’s Comfort, Sport and Track for both Power and Handling). In the middle of the cockpit, there’s a 7-inch vertical screen that controls pretty much everything. Unfortunately, it’s uh, not that great, but that can be remedied by plugging in Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. No need to worry there. To the left of that screen are three buttons that let you select an active aero setting, a custom mode and activate launch control. Below the screen are your start button and gear selector for reverse, neutral and drive.
It’s fairly customizable inside, but the car I was driving was fitted with a whole lot of Alcantara, carbon fiber and metal. It all felt very nice to the touch, as did the leather-wrapped steering wheel and dashboard. The seats, while very very bolstered, were still fairly comfortable even though I had a lot of trouble fiddling with the adjustments. They’re in a very odd place at the front right of the seat. Eventually, I was able to get everything where I wanted it to be.
The 750S, for as intense as it is, is honestly pretty easy to live with. I’m not going to say it’s as relaxing and easy to use as a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, but you get what I’m saying. There’s a 7-cubic-foot frunk as well as a sizable parcel shelf behind your head above the motor. It’s also fitted with a fast-acting front nose lift system so you don’t destroy the very expensive carbon-fiber bumper, and it even has a 360-degree camera, though it’s not very good. Its on-road cruising manners can be very chill if you want them to be. Sure, the engine’s sound never really goes away, but it can quiet down a bit on the highway when the RPMs drop. Even the suspension and seats are very comfy for long trips. You’d really have no problem cruising a long, long way in the 750S. Hell, you can even get decent fuel economy. On a longer highway trip I took, I was able to average nearly 24 mpg. That’s impressive. It’s even got stop-start if you’re feeling environmentally inclined.
Still, this car isn’t without its faults, and most of them come down to shoddy tech and issues with build quality. The tester I drove had under 4,000 miles on it when I picked it up, yet there was a very pronounced rattling sound somewhere inside the car.
I was never really able to figure that out. At one point the car’s reverse camera, which displays in the gauge cluster, refused to go away until I turned the entire car off and back on again. Very strange. Also, never once was the car’s onboard navigation system able to tell where I was. I suppose these could just be issues with my individual car, but it’s tough to say given McLaren’s dodgy track record with reliability. All that being said, I don’t love this car any less because of these issues, and no one in their right mind would, either.
I suppose I should talk about the nasty business of money when it comes to the 750S. If you want this much power, performance and usability, it doesn’t come cheap. A base 750S starts at $330,800 including destination and the gas guzzler tax. The car I drove was far from base with nearly $28,000 in carbon-fiber add-ons. Attach a few more things like the track brakes ($18,050), 360 camera ($4,000), five-spoke wheels ($5,800) and the 12-speaker Bowers & Wilkins stereo ($5,400), and you get an as-tested price of $421,400. This car isn’t fucking around, and neither is its price.
I can sort of understand how a price like that might make you change your mind about the 750S. Surely a car cannot be worth nearly half a million dollars, you’re thinking, but here’s the thing: it sort of is. I know, I know, you can probably get similar performance metrics out of some piece of shit from the junkyard you stuck a huge turbo to, but that isn’t what this car is about. The numbers behind the McLaren 750S only tell a small fraction of the story. The rest of it all has to do with the way it drives, how quickly it can rearrange your guts and how it makes you feel. And I’ll tell you what, it makes me feel like a million bucks, so when you look at it that way, the 750S is kind of a bargain at $420,000. Maybe this truly means my brain is broken.
