My McLaren GT - Ownership Thread

[DRZ]

I had been without my car for a few days short of three months when I collected it on Wednesday evening and gave the 720S back. Crazy how time flies and I was so excited to have my actual car again. As great as the 720S is, driving someone else's car just isn't the same. That said, I did cover around 1800 miles in it and I drove it as nature intended and I've got some fond memories to look back on

What an awesome few days I have had since getting the car back!

Firstly, a quick stop to get my black seatbelts changed to orange. The interior is very black - black leather, black stitching, carbon fibre etc etc and it needed a lift and something to connect the interior to the exterior. The belts are extremely orange and shiny, so much so that it is hard to get a photo of them where they look like they do to the eye. They are a slightly different orange to the exterior of the car - partially because Papaya Spark can be anything from a darkish orange like McLaren Orange to an almost yellow in blazing sunshine. The other "issue" is that to get quality belts made in a particular colour requires you to buy 1000m of material, which is as expensive as you might imagine. I am happy with the slight compromise and from looking at other McLarens with orage belts they aren't a precise match either



This isn't the best photo ever but you can see the belts against the papaya here better than any other photo I seem to have


Secondly, I called in to see The Surman Collection at Bag World. They make bespoke luggage for cars and I've specced up a 5-piece luggage set for my car in carbon fibre with orange contrast stitching and some other little touches. Inexpensive compared to the McLaren offering and actually, given it is bespoke to me and my car I think it is fantastic value for money.

After that I called into C&M for a bite to eat and saw an incredible convoy of cars heading to Supercar Fest the following day. F40LM, Enzo, F430 16M Stradale, 360CS, Carrera GT. Got a nice pic of the GT in the shady bit under the trees.



Finally... Supercar Fest - The Runway. Incredible event, one of the absolute best car days out I have had as it had the sort of Goodwood vibes but even more interactive as owners and the public are all mingling and chatting about their cars. The weather being glorious definitely helped matters as well! I only managed 3 runs up the runway as the queues were pretty lengthy most of the time and by the end of the day when the queues had died down a bit as people started to leave I was knackered, sunburned and facing a 2.5 hour drive home so I decided not to do another. Still, I hit 156mph which is a pretty reasonable speed I think. I was definitely taking too tight a line on the bend which cost me some speed and I think I could have braked a fair bit later and combining the two I think I could have easily cracked 160mph - maybe I'll find out next year.









Hotel Parking Goals:

 

[DRZ]

Onboard:

Outside:

 

[DRZ]

Is that Assetti?

Yes (why?)

 

[DRZ]

Feel like I spotted you in Dudley a couple/few weeks back

I was in Dudley just before supercar fest so you might well have done!

 

[DRZ]

As @chrisd alluded to above, we did an airfield day with drivelimits.com at North Weald (previously run/operated by Andy Walsh as carlimits.com). The format of the day is pretty simple - do things in your own car to give you a better understanding of car control. Some of the exercises you wouldn't ever do in any other scenario but it really does help understand how the car behaves.

Here's a clip of one of the runs - in this exercise you accelerate up to a speed he gives you, take your feet away from the pedals and turn left at the cone onto the runway, trying not to cross the drain line down the middle.

This was at 65mph and nowhere near the drain line (ie I could have gone a good bit faster). By the end of the day I was just about able to hold 110mph through the same corner using a slightly different technique although the brake steer of the McLaren is quite savage and I binned it several times, nuking my rear tyres in the process

The handling circuit at the end of the day was quite fun although between my shagged rears and the bumpy surface I was seriously struggling to put the power down and elected to not risk a spin into the very nasty gravel area by pushing hard. Good fun all the same, and I have some rears being fitted tomorrow

 

[DRZ]

Passed the 5000 mile mark, meaning I've done 2600 miles since buying it. Still absolutely loving it!

 

[DRZ]

18.1 is about somewhere in the middle of what I tend to get - I'd been driving somewhat slower than usual as I was at the back of a convoy helping to keep us all together. It'll comfortably return mid-30s on a motorway run. It will just as comfortably return 10-11mpg on a proper hoon. I managed 2.8mpg at SupercarFest It is significantly more fuel efficient than the 720S (due to the mapping, I expect) - I averaged a shade under £1/mile in the 720S based on ~£1.80/L.

 

[DRZ]

I was I was there for a good few hours and would have loved to have stayed longer but had to get home. What did you arrive in?

 

[DRZ]

Last week I set off to attend the French Grand Prix. From my home in the North West to Le Castellet via Reims (to get the above photos from the historic pits) on the way down and Dijon on the way back the route was a little over 2,000 miles so would put the GT's GT credentials to the test. The frunk swallowed up two large and fully packed soft bags with ease and the "privacy" area in the back held two reasonable sized cool bag backpacks. I could easily have got more in - two more bags the same as in the frunk at least - but we chose to pack most of the stuff into another car that was going with us.

Day 1's goal was to get to Reims. We set off a little before 8am, stopping at a services at about 10am for a bite to eat around and a dash of fuel to ensure we could get to Folkestone without the need for a further stop. We elected to fill up at Tesco in Folkestone before the train to avoid having to stop anywhere in Calais. Fuel economy was exceptional on the run:



Unfortunately, the Eurotunnel was stuffed and it took 6 hours for us to get on the train. The 'support' car ended up crossing an hour before me so we needed to try and make up time through France which dropped the fuel economy figures significantly

Overall, the GT was superb over the 600 miles, proving very comfortable over extended periods at any speed.

Day 2 was supposed to be a day of blasting down France as fast as possible without getting into trouble with the law... Despite being entirely sensible, trouble hit on the way to Lyon - an engine warning message popped up on the dash but the car was driving absolutely fine so the decision was made to drive cautiously to the next services, have lunch and see what happened after it went to sleep during the stop. About 5 mins later and just a few hundred metres from the services, a mild misfire started which forced me to the hard shoulder. A quick "switch it off and back on again" attempt cured the misfire and we got into the services. I was thinking it could be dodgy fuel - we'd filled up with Excellium 98 at a 2-pump Total in Reims and although that was hundreds of miles back there was still a chance it might have caused the issue. The services we'd stopped at sold Shell fuel so a full tank of V-Power went in and we set off. Zero warning messages, car driving absolutely fine. Excellent, dodgy fuel confirmed and we were back on track. Sadly, 130km later, the issue returned only this time it was REALLY bad. Any throttle input at all and the car felt like it was going to shake itself to pieces. Of all the places for this to happen, this was in the tunnels underneath Lyon! By some miracle I managed to get out of the tunnels and off the A7 safely and into a layby in an industrial area. McLaren Assist took the car off to the nearest dealer (in Geneva...) and I took myself to a nearby Sixt to get the replacement hire car in the form of an Audi A4 - the last car they had available at all that day.

That's all she wrote! The car is in Geneva, McLaren Assist will deliver it back to me when it is fixed but at the moment there is no word on what's wrong with it or when it will be delivered back to me. I'll update you all when I know more - I expect it is something trivial like a sensor or something like that as it drove up onto the low loader absolutely fine but we'll have to wait and see...

 

[DRZ]

Gutted mate.

Is this not the second time its had an issue? Sounds to me like maybe a faulty injector or spark plug failure, unless the engines are known to drop a cylinder but from what I know of Mclarens the engines tend to be one of their more solid areas, so like you say maybe a sensor gone bad causing the engine to run bad.

That MPG is amazing, could only dream of that in the 458 or GT3 lol as they never see 30+, not even close. The Exige can do that kind of mpg though, but I'd never want to drive 600 miles in it lol. It is also having a new supercharger fitted soon, so typically British reliability, though in fairness the Exige is driving fine just Lotus diagnosed the noise as not normal and agreed to fit me a new supercharger under warranty.

It has had some very minor previous things relatively speaking, nothing like this. They all (720S and GT, which share an engine) famously have coolant leaks due to crappy hose clamps, mine included. The other issues I had were cosmetic or software related.

Looking at McLaren Life etc it seems that most of the issues which throw up the warning I got are sensor/emissions related. I didn't get an EML either which is something of a mystery and might lean toward perhaps a fuel pump problem or a gummed up filter if it was poor fuel. Time will tell I guess!

Re the MPG, that actually got even better - as you can see there the average speed was 60mph over 80 miles which includes passing through your neck of the woods on the M6 and 60 can be hard to achieve at all through there let alone as an average. At Folkestone it was showing 37.8. It had dropped to 30.x by the time I got to Reims though...

 

[DRZ]

Update!

I called McLaren Client Services in Woking as I'd not had any info from McLaren Assist or Geneva since Friday, the day after they took my car... I almost immediately got a call back from Geneva with an update. Something had got lost in translation with my contact details hence the comms issues which is understandable when you consider a Brit calling a French call centre about a UK car and the car being delivered to Switzerland.

The issue is a failed low pressure fuel pump inside the fuel tank. There is restricted availability of the part at the moment, so we're looking at a week before the car will be fixed. Book time for the job is 6 hours and they seem to think it will all be done on the day the part is delivered next week. Then just a case of getting the car back to the UK, hopefully in time for a planned week in Ireland at the end of August

 

[DRZ]

I have the car back with me in the UK

After some delays getting the new fuel pump to Switzerland, the car was back together and ready to go on Monday. Unfortunately, McLaren Assist (aka "The AA") have been "very busy" and their estimated delivery date to get the car back to me on a covered transporter was 6-8 weeks. As you might expect, I hit the roof and called McLaren Client Services to see what could be done. After a bit of back and forth it became clear to me that the only way to improve on the timescales was to go and collect it myself which I put to McLaren and they agreed. They also agreed to cover the majority of my costs for collecting. Flights were booked - unfortunately I missed the boat on all direct flights that would have worked for me so I ended up flying via Frankfurt. My Star Alliance Gold status expired a few weeks back which is rotten timing too. Never mind... I made it to McLaren Geneva in good time. As I would imagine is commonplace, McLaren Geneva is not a one-make dealership - they are primarily Aston Martin and Rolls Royce but also retail McLaren and Koenigsegg cars. Their website suggested there might have been a Gemera there but sadly I couldn't find it if it was there at all. My car was driven out and handed over and with it freshly detailed etc and looking brand new I headed off toward France on the long, long drive home.

The first road I hit out of the dealership was a pretty incredible winding mountain road (https://goo.gl/maps/oeMzxYMkKAwEs4td7) which reminded me of exactly why I wanted a GT car that drives like this instead of something overweight and numb. In fact, most of the N roads from there up through to where I picked up the A39 near Poligny on the way toward Dijon were great - really nice flow to them and although I was respectful of the speed limits due to not having a co-driver I was still able to really enjoy the roads and the car. The issues I had experienced with the misfire etc were totally gone and a distant memory which was really, really welcome. By the time I'd got to Dijon, I'd covered about 100km of the 680km I needed to cover on Day 1 and was back in love with everything about the car. I had the longest unbroken motorway run of my ownership so far ahead of me and I wondered how I would be feeling at the end of it. I needn't have even given it a moment's thought - the GT really is BMW 5-series levels of ride comfort over long distances. The B&O sound system completely deals with the comparatively high levels of road noise as well so I arrived at my overnight hotel stop feeling much the same as I did at the start of my journey in Geneva. No mean feat considering I'd left for Manchester Airport at 3am and arrived at the hotel shortly after 10pm! Including the twisty mountain roads, I'd averaged just slightly over 35mpg over ~650km / 400 miles.

Day 2 was much the same - I left the hotel nice and early to try and get on an earlier crossing or deal with any queues in good time and thankfully the plan worked and I was allocated a slot on a train almost an hour ahead of schedule. The UK leg of the journey was comparatively dreadful - I am guessing that the train strikes made a significant impact on the traffic levels as once I'd got past the M25 the traffic up the M1 & M6 was pretty bad - I have never, ever queued for the tag lane on the M6 toll before but it took me almost 15 minutes to get through!! My time gains made at the tunnel were obliterated by this point and I got home just after 1pm after another ~350 mile drive.

Total combined mileage was a little over 750 miles with an average fuel consumption of about 32mpg (thanks entirely to the UK traffic being so bad - I expect it would have been somewhere around 35-36 otherwise).

I am super impressed. I doubt I will do so many miles in this fashion again in my ownership as I like to stop and see things on my long road trips but I know I could absolutely do it if I needed to. A 600+bhp, mid-engined carbon fibre-tubbed car has no right to be this capable both across distances like this and when you get it off the motorway onto the really twisty stuff. Yeah, it has broken down and caused me some temporary inconvenience but... what a machine!



P.S. I guess it goes with the territory when you buy a car in bright metallic orange but the amount of attention this car seems to get is far beyond what I expected. I had a car full of extremely excited Italians pull alongside me on the autoroute and the amount of arm waving, positive gestures etc etc was hilarious Loads of people waved, gave me the thumbs up etc etc as I drove along which was ace as quite honestly I was expecting mostly jealousy and derision from other motorists.

 

[DRZ]

Haha! Looking at that the time of your post I can only have been there for a few minutes at most but I suppose it does stand out a bit

It is my last night in Ireland tonight, it’s been awesome. I’ll do a proper post at some point

 

[DRZ]

I took the GT across to Ireland for a week-long road trip, starting with a friend's wedding and then heading south to Cork and then winding round to the Wild Atlantic Way. We took in both the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle peninsula, both stunning in their own right!

The GT once again showed its GT credentials in that whenever we arrived at a stop we weren't grumbling in discomfort and nor did we have to make unscheduled stops to stretch our legs or backs etc. On the other side, it performed really well on the twisty (and sometimes extremely bumpy) roads and when I wanted to just open the taps and enjoy some of the roads it never disappointed.

Between that and my visit this weekend to Salon Prive, I've now done just a little over 7,000 miles and that means the car is coming up on the 10k mile mark I bought it to drive it though so this is good news

I've got a top speed run day to do at Elvington in the near future - I managed 156mph at Supercar Fest on a much shorter runway but with a rolling start so we'll see what I manage to hit and report back.

I've also got a service booked in toward the end of October which is the "major" service, looking like a ~£1400 bill at the moment but we'll see if there's some negotiation there.



I absolutely bl dy love this car and the experiences I have had in it so far

 

[DRZ]

We're planning on doing a similar route next summer so glad you enjoyed it - looks like some great roads and amazing scenery (plus a few good pubs apparently)

I'm sure you'll have a fantastic time. Make sure you've done your homework regarding which direction around the Ring of Kerry you want to travel and what time you want to set off accordingly. Dingle is not quite as critical I don't think but still, we managed to beat the rush on a few occasions where we might have been unable to park had we been a little later. Oh and don't bother with the Cliffs of Moher unless you have a really special reason to go - it is extremely overpriced, overcrowded and not at all worth the time or money (IMHO) given everything else you can see in the immediate surroundings for zero cost whatsoever.

 

[DRZ]

Ireland feels like an eternity ago but I still look back and smile at the adventure we had over there. With 2022 almost over, 2023 is shaping up to be awesome, in car terms at least. I'm doing a big Europe trip with some club friends and that will be mega. Road trips in this car are just fantastic as there's so little obvious compromise. I'm also trying to make a trip to the Arctic Circle work in my personal calendar plus some other little personal bucket list items.

Since Ireland, I've taken my car to Salon Prive (one of the best motoring shows of the year, year in, year out), went up the runway at Elvington, visited the McLaren Technology Centre and generally attended as many interesting car meets and drives out as I could. The car gave me no trouble at all - just been feeding it fuel and I've had to top up the oil and screenwash here and there too. I think I've put 1L total of oil in the car over 9,000 miles or so.

Elvington was a great day of fun - 187.1 for the standing mile and 193mph over 2km. Not bad! Stock 720S/F8s were just cracking 200mph over the 2km and the sport series cars (570S and 600LT) were just slightly behind so all things considered it went pretty much exactly as expected and the GT sort of sits where you'd imagine it does.

(thanks to @peterattheboro for these shots!)

Driving it in October conditions hasn't been overly kind to the cosmetic state of the car - if you follow my instagram you'll have seen the state it is in at the moment



It'll be washed soon...

 

[DRZ]

One year anniversary!


It has been a relatively quiet winter hence the massive lack of posting. Not much to report since October really. The car was serviced at the end of October at a cost of £1394. This is the "tock" service of the tick/tock rhythm, with the more minor service coming in at about half the cost. There's nothing particularly standing out to me as especially expensive from the itemised invoice given this is a main dealer service, more than 50% of the cost is labour. I did raise an eyebrow at the air filters costing significantly more than the engine oil but it is what it is I guess. They do give you a nice box of chocolates to soften the blow though

Took it down to the Collecting Cars Donington meet in November and that pretty much wrapped up 2022 for me

I've hardly used it since then in all honesty. It remained tucked away in the garage through to early Feb just waiting for the weather to clear up a bit and for the excuses to use it to come up again. The first run of the year was a run down to Millbrook where my car was used to sample audio for an upcoming video game, which was very interesting. I also took a day out from the madness to head to Caffeine and Machine.





They were very careful plus I have full-car PPF so I wasn't worried about any damage!


Year One Review
I've posted honestly throughout the thread and hope to always present a balanced and unbiased view of the good and bad of ownership, so there shouldn't be anything new here. Looking back through the thread and thinking back through the year, there have been some really good bits and some bad bits. Overall, knowing what I know now, would I buy this exact car again? Absolutely I would, although I would probably not go about it in the exact same way. The start was bumpy and there have been little bits here and there but all is forgiven when put in context of how much I enjoy ownership. In a world of Instagram where the perception is that everyone earns more than you, has huge car collections and the free time to use them all it is really easy to forget just how special it feels to own even just one car like this in a lifetime, especially in my mid 30s where I have the health and opportunities to enjoy it to the fullest. I smile to myself every time I see it, even if I'm just popping into the garage to grab something or walking back to it at a petrol station.

I've covered well in excess of 10,000 miles since picking it up - I've driven it to France and back from Switzerland, toured around Ireland, taken it up to 200mph, been to events, car shows etc around the country and thoroughly enjoyed it all.

What has that cost? Aside from the servicing I mentioned above, I've replaced the rear tyres twice and the fronts once. The first set of rears met their end after a DriveLimits day on ~5k miles, the second set surprised me as they "only" lasted 8k miles and I don't think I've really abused them other than enjoying some spirited driving. In any case, I was looking for an excuse to ditch the MC-rated Pirelli P Zeros in favour of a tyre that works better more of the time in the UK climate. As an aside, I chose Continental SportContact 7 over Michelin Pilot Sport 4S as from the reviews they seem to be the superior tyre. I was very impressed with Continental SportContact 5s in the past in every department except insane wear rate, so if the 7 is improved in this regard as the reviewers claim then I expect to be seriously impressed. My initial feedback given the cold winter conditions is that they are immediately more grippy at every temperature I've seen yet. They are also quieter, or at least make a different noise which I perceive to be quieter. Given the Pirelli tyre has huge foam blocks glued inside, this was a real surprise to me and was noticeable within 100 yards of the tyre fitter. I'll feed back on how they are as time goes on and I have more data. The fitted cost for the set of 4 Contis was £1006. The pair of MC-rated Pirelli rears was around £650 which is very slightly more expensive than the Continentals.

Fuel... I've not tracked this precisely as, frankly, I don't really want to know! I can easily hit 35mpg on a long run, 37-38mpg if I stick the cruise on at 70mph indicated and there's no traffic. Nobody buys a McLaren for fuel economy reasons but it really matters quite a lot when you want to travel long distances in one go. For perspective, the difference between 27 and 37 mpg is about 100 miles extra between fuel stops, which is often the difference between stopping or not stopping at all! On the flip side, it can also hit less than 10mpg no problem when pressing on. This variability is actually somewhat annoying because it means as soon as you peel off the beaten track onto more interesting roads the range you thought you had just evaporates and a search for a petrol station often results. I think a reasoned estimate of my fuel spend would be in the ballpark of £5000. I've also topped up the oil, a little over a litre total which probably comes to about £40. Other than that and screenwash my personal bills have been zero.



Insurance is one of the great mysteries of life and varies hugely from person to person and from car to car. This year, my renewal is £830.

I had the whole car PPFd which has definitely proven to be worth the money as it has some pock marks here and there which would probably have been colossal stone chips. The cost of that was about £2.5k which I think will pay for itself given my usage of the car!

Warranty claims? Yep. Three replacement panels, a fairly significant coolant leak, a drivers door strut, the front suspension "failed" according to the computer which was just a software update to fix, the front boot latch needed some adjustment so I could close it properly and it has an intermittent rattle from the rear which as I type this it is in McLaren for the 3rd (and hopefully last) time to be rectified.

Y1 total, circa £10k spent all-in excluding depreciation, or £1/mile. [NB: Depreciation is hard to judge and a guess at best - one for the end of the road when I look back and calculate TCO.] Honestly, I don't think I can put a value on how much I enjoy it so I don't feel like that is a particularly relevant number for me, just providing numbers for interested readers


Boring reality stuff out the way, what's it really like? Does it meet the requirements I set out to fulfil at the start?

Overall I think it is absolutely superb.

Speaking openly, it is probably better than I thought it would be in some ways and not quite as good in others. When I set out to buy a car, I wanted something that could cope with ~2 weeks of luggage for two, get me across continents comfortably and yet still be amazing fun when out for a drive in Wales or the Alps or wherever the road takes me. The 2 week luggage thing is the Achilles heel of most supercars, or at least it is when one of the two people wants to take a hairdryer, straighteners and who knows what else. The GT has a lot of luggage room - more than enough for a pair of cabin sized bags at the front and then even more storage at the rear. The rear space is a weird shape but also bigger than it looks, which means you can put way more back there than you think... However, it is mostly open to the cabin aside from a section right at the very back which is big enough to take one large or two smaller backpacks - so without adequate strapping it is probably going to hurt if you have to stop in a hurry. The practical reality is that a one week trip is totally fine (and would have been totally fine in a 720S...) but 2 weeks takes some planning and is maybe slightly more compromised than ideal but a compromise I am happy with. Certainly weighted against the alternative in something like a DB11, this is still the right call for my personal blend of wants but it isn't quite as good at accommodating luggage in the real world as I thought it would be.



From a performance perspective it remains about where I thought it would be - more than fast enough, excellent chassis, steering is telepathic and the feedback is really great. I think it fair to say that when at the upper reaches of the performance envelope you can start to feel the GT-ness of the setup vs 720S. Not a criticism, not a bad thing but it isn't quite as on its toes as the "sportier" cars feel when really "on it". All relative of course, you couldn't make a Bentley do the things that this car does in sportiness terms and nor do I think the 720S would be quite as good as the GT long distance. That's about what I thought it was after my first ever drive and I still hold that view today with a lot more experience behind the wheel.

When I first got mine, I'd almost never see another one anywhere. At most big meets I would be the only GT there and there are hardly any owners on the owners club groups etc. That's starting to change a little bit as the market starts to understand the GT a bit more. I've noticed a couple out and about and started to even see others at shows and things. I was in NYC last week and one with an identical spec to mine drove past which is something I never thought I would see.

I'm looking forward to 2023 with the GT - plans include attending an F1 race in Europe, another European long drive adventure, a few UK-based road trips and more besides!

 

[DRZ]

Love the update - the game sound sampling sounds super cool. How did you get into it? Were you contacted by them?


How's your mum doing?

I was asked by someone who does this sort of thing, usually for films/tv/music videos. Might be a one-off, who knows.

My mum is still here and is as comfortable as possible, which is all we can ask for really

 

[DRZ]

GT car doing GT things!

Took it up to Skye - I have to say, the road up to Portree from Fort William is incredible. Mile after mile of generally perfect road surfaces and great sight lines for making overtakes when you come across the odd car (though hardly any of them around really). Came back down through the Cairngorms but this was somewhat spoiled by very foggy/wet weather hindering both progress and sightseeing opportunities!

Fog:

Took the A68 home and then detoured via the awesome Stanhope road, calling in at the Crown Inn for some lunch - a really great petrolhead pub which almost always has something interesting parked up outside. I've been here twice recently, so I'm nicking a "pro" shot taken from another trip:

Paid a visit to Holy Island and, as is the rules, I stopped for a pic in the middle of the causeway crossing

Put the drone up as I was part of a group...

 

[DRZ]

I've been neglecting this thread quite a bit... time for a few updates!

Since my last post, I've had a few more adventures Most are not particularly of note beyond my own personal enjoyment however the famous McLaren "unreliability" has been notably absent - something that does appear to be a very very common theme amongst those who use their cars. Garage queens take note!

First of the notable drives was my attempt at the Land's End to Lowestoft challenge made famous by Jeremy Clarkson in a Jaguar XJ. I must admit to cheating ever so slightly in that I didn't do it on the exact date of the solstice (which was a Wednesday) for calendaring reasons, instead opting to do it on the Saturday night instead. This adds an additional 80s or so onto the night but I was pretty confident that wouldn't make any difference to me... I headed to Cornwall on the Friday, spent Saturday chilling out at St Michaels Mount before a nice dinner at the First and Last Inn - all highly recommended even if the island is closed on a Saturday...

Heading into Land's End, the atmosphere was pretty buoyant. I wasn't alone doing the challenge and we all felt like it would be a tough but achievable challenge. Sunset was shaping up to be absolutely spectacular with some really nice fluffy clouds in the sky but sadly they all disappeared in the last few minutes, so no really really stunning sunset images for me. Maybe next time!

As we headed off into the night the reality of the challenge started to creep in. There's a few possible routes you can take: Up the M5 to the M4 and across, diagonally along the A303 or (bizarrely) up via Birmingham. They all have similar ETAs, with the A303 probably being the more fun route and the M5/M4 route being the most boring. Unfortunately for us, the A303 was closed so up the M5 we went. This slightly elongates the route but in essence you need to maintain an average speed of about 67mph to complete the ~450 mile drive. Had we not realised the A303 was closed we'd have blown it before we even started! Fuel was also a concern - while most McLarens are stupendously good on fuel for what they are, that is if and only if you can keep the speed/acceleration to a minimum. As soon as the speeds creep up the fuel economy absolutely plummets with a difference of as much as 15mpg between a sensible cruising speed and one just slightly above that. My tank range is ~300 miles so even with a tailwind and being extremely ginger with the throttle there was no way I was going to make it without stopping at least once.

We hit quite a bit of traffic on the A30 through some roadworks which cost us precious time very early on in the drive requiring some progress to be made which in turn meant we were consigned to needing an additional stop. The first stop came and was completed as planned, the second came after some calculations had us running out of fuel with a mile or so to go and thankfully we hit what turned out to be the very last open fuel station on our route! Time/distance calculations were being run pretty frequently vs our benchmark of the required average and honestly we needn't have been worried at any point once we were clear of the traffic. Driving the M25 at 3am was surprisingly busy but otherwise the roads were mostly ours and ours alone which does help maintain a steady average speed.


We made it comfortably!

A few of the drivers got split along the way for various reasons but one decided to go via the Birmingham route and was only about 5 mins behind us but still in plenty of time to make the sunrise. The only car that didn't make it was a Tesla who was being extremely ambitious in a lot of ways, mainly the absolutely ludicrous speed they'd need to maintain in order to get their required 60+ mins of charging en route. They passed us somewhere along the M5 at an admirable rate of knots but were nowhere to be seen at the finish line. I did spot them the following day with some damage which implied an argument with a badger/fox/baby deer might have added to their struggles but honestly I think their attempt was doomed from the start.

So in summary, the GT behaved beautifully and was a total joy to pilot cross-country. I was as fresh as you could reasonably expect following a 7 hour night drive at the end of a 20 hour day and if you'd asked me to drive back to Land's End I'd have gladly done so (although maybe with a few hours sleep first!).

Another adventure-filled post coming very soon!