Series finale: Saying goodbye to the McLaren 570S
McLaren’s Sports Series is taking a bow, and with it goes one of Woking’s finest creations. We takes the 570S for a final drive and wonder how the all-new Artura might take its place
It was a filthy day in November 2015 and I was gatecrashing an Autocar group test: I’d heard the boys were roaming around Wales in four fast cars so I offered to meet them “so I can drive the tracking car”. That’s the vehicle from which the photographer dangles while taking a picture of all the cars in the test driving in formation behind. The subject of the test was the then new Audi R8, which we’d put up against the Aston V12 Vantage S and Porsche 911 Turbo S. The Audi got its arse kicked.
But it was the fourth car that won, and it was the fourth car that lay behind my apparently generous offer of assistance: the McLaren 570S. Explaining its victory over such stellar opposition, Matt Saunders wrote: “It pulls the rug out from underneath the fully fledged, £200,000- plus thoroughbred mid-engined exotic. ‘Anything you can do,’ it says, ‘I can do better.’ And cheaper – although you can whisper that last bit if you like.”
When the final frames had been shot, I asked if I could take it back along the road – a swooping, soaring slick of Tarmac, 10 miles out, 10 miles back. It didn’t take long. But in those few minutes, I saw not only what a McLaren could do as a car but also where McLaren could be as a company: lighter, faster, more engaging and just plain better than anything else to which it might be compared. Cheaper, too. I was absolutely knocked out by that car.
More than five years later, I still am. Charged with coming up with some kind of valedictory for the 570S and the entire Sports Series it spawned, I borrowed a car from McLaren’s heritage fleet and headed back to exactly that road, to repeat precisely the same drive, even down to the car parks at either end in which I turned around. And there was not one thing about the way that car got down that road that made me think it’s in urgent need of replacement.
McLaren’s Sports Series is taking a bow, and with it goes one of Woking’s finest creations. We takes the 570S for a final drive and wonder how the all-new Artura might take its place
www.autocar.co.uk
