McLaren 750S Is Here To Change Your World

My journey with McLaren started with me barely knowing the name. Vaguely aware of the Formula 1 team, I knew Bruce McLaren was a driver, I didn’t realise he was a genuine New Zealand hero.

In 1992 the groundbreaking McLaren F1 road car was released, bringing McLaren out of the pitlane and onto the mainstreet. I like many other people at the time started learning more about man and machine. That he was Kiwi. That he won Monaco Formula 1, won in Formula 1 and the Canam series in a car bearing his own name, and he won Le Mans. This guy was a hero. New Zealands motorsport doyen. Why did no one talk about him in New Zealand?

A few years later I made a London pilgrimage to the McLaren F1 showroom. Oxford Street. I wasn’t allowed in. I looked at it with many others. Resplendent in bright orange. I can picture it today.
On moving to Remuera I was jittering with excitement upon discovering the local garage was the McLaren garage. Where he grew up. That’s where he learned to make cars. My twin boys’ local school hall was even named the ‘McLaren Hall’! World famous in Remuera it seems. Beside the garage a narrow stairway led to a small upstairs room. A museum of sorts, a dusty shrine to Bruce and his achievements. I was taken aback by how little I knew of the man and his achievements.

Now I was immersed in a McLaren world and started to learn everything I could. It was natural that McLaren took place in my heart as the ‘local’ team in whatever they were doing. McLaren has always had a Kiwi spirit. That was where you went if you were a mechanically-minded Kiwi in London in the ’60s. You connected with Bruce and built the fastest cars in the world with no budget. And you loved it.

McLaren has a budget now. They still build the fastest cars in the world. On and off the track. The 750S is the summation of the success of Bruce McLaren. Uncompromising yet classy, fierce yet friendly. Existing in a rarefied space where only a few companies genuinely play.

The McLaren 750S is the successor to the 720S, with 30 PS more, 30 kilograms less and 30% stiffer. An out and out supercar from a company at the top of its game, a road-devouring demon and a track weapon. It doesn’t look half bad either.

We were fortunate enough to be invited to the press day at Hampton Downs circuit with McLaren and the driving events company Downforce. Arriving at the track you are presented with three gorgeous cars on pitlane: 750S, the 750S Spider and the Artura. The Artura is a step towards Formula One technology with a twin turbo three-litre V-six engine plus a hybrid setup giving it 700ps (515Kw). What you notice driving this car is just how compliant and sorted it is even when doing well over 200 kph, over bumps and round corners, on the circuit it handles everything with aplomb. Some very clever trickery is happening – not just the world first sensor-embedded cyber tires. You’re barely aware of any hybrid operations happening. It’s an incredibly smooth super performance car.

The Artura, it’s a fabulous car yet it’s not why we are here. We did laps in it to give us a benchmark for what was to come. The main event. The 750S. The 750S features McLaren’s 4.0L 90° V8. Tuned to 750 PS (Pferdestärke / metric horsepower or whatever that means). I call it 550 kilowatts and more importantly 800Nm torque. The car only weighs 1,389 kilograms. Just getting into a 750S is an event. Climb over a massive carbon monocoque and under a massive door and lower yourself into the bucket. Strap in and you are bolted to the car.

But when this vehicle gets going it’s all kinds of extreme. The acceleration at 2.8s 0-100 kph barely matters. You don’t go so slow. You might be interested in the 7.2s seconds to 200 or the 10.1s quarter mile, or a top speed of 332kph. Then again on a track you don’t often look at speed. You look at the track and in this car, you notice that it seems small at such speed. With all of the power going to just two wheels, you might imagine traction is a problem. But sitting on massive Pirelli P Zero tyres, it’s not. You can virtually go into any corner at any speed in the car simply naturally handles it. Various driver aids offer to help you but unless you push the envelope, they don’t have to do much because the car is so capable. One of the things you adjust to in a supercar or race car is how you break you break later, and you break harder. Many laps into driving with Brock Gilchrist (GT86 Champion and GT4 race winner), I managed to get up to what Brock called the “rip my face off” level of braking. He exclaimed. I did too. The car was unfazed.

We were spoiled by the McLaren team. While the tin top 750S and Artura were mainly on track, delighting the drivers, a Spider convertible 750S sat there for our permanent oggling. A thing of beauty. The hard tonneau roof folds back at the push of a button and this looks sensational. One of the most gorgeous cars I’ve ever seen, especially in the onyx black. We weren’t driving that one today though. We just leered at it.

If people were impressed when they got out of the Artura they were shocked and expletive ridden on exiting the 750S. How can it go that fast? Corner that well? How could something this pretty be so…. Evil. How could it spit so much fire? It does spit fire. You can light a cigar on the exhaust if that’s your jam.

A truely unique opportunity, one that I will always remember. Just like seeing that F1 the first time on Oxford street. And i’m not the only one who feels like that. Visiting the Formula One just weeks ago there was a tribute drive for Bruce including many of his race-winning cars from Canam, F1 and others. He was loved and respected globally for his work and for his success. It’s over 50 years since Bruce McLaren won a Formula One race in a car bearing his own name. That heritage is alive and breathing still. That heritage is in a 750S.