My McLaren GT - Ownership Thread
- Thread starter DRZ
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Man of Honour
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With regards to the garage wouldn't it be more cost effective to insulate the garage properly rather than running a dehumidifier for hours at a time? Especially with the electricity prices, and also potential fire hazard of leaving an application like that on? Or am I being silly?
I think it needs both, and that is the plan. Running a dehumidifier 24/7 isn't expensive even at current electricity prices - its about 600W at full blast but it has a humidistat and sleeps when it isn't needed, plus I don't have it set to be really really dry, just about 50% RH is enough. I think it'll cost a few quid a month at most, well worth it to keep the stuff in the garage from being ruined slowly over time. At 50% RH it was removing 4-6L of water per day initially which has slowed right down now it has been running a while.
Regarding the fire risk - sure, it is a risk but these are designed to run 24/7 on boats and in garages etc. I don't see it as more risky than the lithium batteries for my tools or the petrol etc.
Man of Honour
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Cool - well it seems like a good solution - as you say for the stuff in the garage it's worth it. I guess if you can afford that you can afford the electricity!
Love it mate - enjoy!
Mine is a 700W unit, you can manually set it is to low at which it consumes 350W and you can pre-set the humidity level which I set at 55% and as such like you say it spends a lot of its time shut down, my garage is also insulated but having both is best of both worlds. Our electric bill is insane anyway, so I can probably tweak a few appliances to use less electric, am already going to add more insulation to the hot tub. Thankfully for us we have a log burning fire so have started to use that a lot more now rather than pay inflated gas prices as wood is cheap and I also get a free van full every quarter as well which helps or just gets stacked up at the front of the house.
To be honest I would hope that the GT is proven water tight anyway, I know Mclaren had issues with 570S with damp getting where it should not and when stood for a while created issues, not sure if they fixed it on later models, but one would assume the GT won't have said issue. My 458 used to live outside with no ill effects and its Italian and has a thorough dislike for cold weather.
I've yet to park it anywhere in the rain so I guess I'll find out. I'm not overly worried about the car really, it is a car and it is getting used as much as possible so I am sure it'll be alright. It is the "stuff" in there which I'm trying to protect.
We too have a log burner and 2-3 ton bags of logs, most of which are from the many trees on our property so cost nothing.
I've yet to park it anywhere in the rain so I guess I'll find out. I'm not overly worried about the car really, it is a car and it is getting used as much as possible so I am sure it'll be alright. It is the "stuff" in there which I'm trying to protect.
We too have a log burner and 2-3 ton bags of logs, most of which are from the many trees on our property so cost nothing.
The fact its used I doubt you will have any issues mate, most problems come about from lack of use. Which does worry me a little about the 458 as its been sat for several months now, the nice weather is incoming though so it will be out and hopefully trouble free, but its an Italian and so far its been trouble free running for three years, hopefully it stays that way.
Snap.. two weeks till mine gets some use and actually a bit scared lol! It's been months and months.
Yep like you I am now fortunate to have more suitable daily hack for salty roads, I did use to drive the 458 year round but Italian cars hate British salty roads, hence one of my rear arches started to corrode a known issue on 458's and earlier cars, so had to get that all repaired by Ferrari, which they did to perfection but it was not free. So now during the Winter months it stays inside in the dry, the downside of that is lack of use so increased risk of something mechanical failing but hopefully as its in a dry garage it will be happy. It is a keeper as even three years on it can still scare and shock me, plus its value is now only heading in one direction as its now probably worth more than I paid for it even though I've added 15,000 miles and its another three years older, so result.
I will say though now seeing a 296 in the flesh, its a proper looker, but apart from looks nothing else makes me want one, far prefer my slower 458 any time, starting the thing up is an event in itself.
Yep like you I am now fortunate to have more suitable daily hack for salty roads, I did use to drive the 458 year round but Italian cars hate British salty roads, hence one of my rear arches started to corrode a known issue on 458's and earlier cars, so had to get that all repaired by Ferrari, which they did to perfection but it was not free. So now during the Winter months it stays inside in the dry, the downside of that is lack of use so increased risk of something mechanical failing but hopefully as its in a dry garage it will be happy. It is a keeper as even three years on it can still scare and shock me, plus its value is now only heading in one direction as its now probably worth more than I paid for it even though I've added 15,000 miles and its another three years older, so result.
I will say though now seeing a 296 in the flesh, its a proper looker, but apart from looks nothing else makes me want one, far prefer my slower 458 any time, starting the thing up is an event in itself.
Work would kill me using the 360 daily, the fuel bill
, it's been sat in the heated garage so hoping all okay, decided I'm running it again from 1st April every year, gives enough time for council to stop using the grit mainly and some april showers to wash the roads. Not long nowThe best bit of that car is the key as I designed it
Nice work! I love that the back of the key is painted to match the car, a nice touch.
Ordered some new plates from fourdot and assigned my plate to the car. They arrived this morning and I have to say that I'm reasonably impressed with the quality but then for the cost of them they ought to be decent!
Soldato
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I recently complained to four dot as my front NSX plate had started to "lift" between the layers. Not good enough for a £150 or so set of plates.
Great service though as they apologised and sent out a brand new set. Can't fault that.
Great service though as they apologised and sent out a brand new set. Can't fault that.
Update time!
I am coming up to about 600 miles driven now which is plenty of time to get to know things on a better level than any test drive could give you. I could write a very long post here but I will try to keep it brief.
I am still getting used to the way the numbers on the speedo increase. On paper and certainly at lower speeds it shouldn’t be all that different to the M5 - but it is. Significantly. It doesn’t actually feel all that much faster in a strange sort of way except at full throttle beyond 6k rpm - but if I accelerate so that I feel like I’m getting shoved at about the same rate as I did in the M5 and actually look at the speedo, it is absolutely insane how much faster I am travelling. I need to completely recalibrate my senses as I cannot yet quite fathom the immediacy with which big speeds appear on the dashboard. I think the refinement of it all helps mask a significant chunk of the speed which I wasn’t expecting at all.
The steering is sublime and gets better the more I get used to it. Initially, to me it felt a bit like it weighted up too quickly and made the car feel “heavy” but that’s just years in FR cars and compromised steering to train out of my brain. I need to remember my previous mid-engine car ownership experience and consciously apply it - and when I do I am very much rewarded. It is a total joy to actively thread down a country lane at legal speeds (or indeed at any speed).
The ride is superb. I don’t mean “for a McLaren” or “for a sporty car” I mean in general, compared to almost anything it is eerily good. It is definitely better than anything else I was looking at, better than the M5 and probably on par with the Range Rover. Not as quiet by a long chalk but in pure physical comfort terms it is sensational. How they’ve done it I don’t know but it is magical to be in a car like this driving down cobbled streets in total comfort.
Finally, the measure of customer service is rarely when buying something and invariably when things go wrong does the truth of an organisation emerge. I have noticed a slight (and I do mean slight) clicking when I open the driver side door. The passenger side is silent so I put a call in to the dealer to ask if it is normal/expected for such a noise to be there. They offered me a slot straight away to come down and demonstrate the noise to them and get an opinion on it. I only had to open the door once for them to confirm that no, the noise is not normal. The master technician said it would be only the second time he’d seen the issue in his many years of working on these cars and the gas strut needs to be replaced. While I was there I also asked him about a couple of other absolutely minuscule items I had noticed (like the frunk being more difficult to close than I anticipated but only when it is a cold day) and all of them were acknowledged, understood, diagnosed and are being addressed without question. Frankly I wouldn’t have even bothered with anything so trivial on any previous car I’ve owned but they are bending over backwards to help as they want the cars to be absolutely perfect. The entire experience was superb and exactly the opposite of what The Internet would have you believe about dealing with warranty stuff at McLaren.
I am coming up to about 600 miles driven now which is plenty of time to get to know things on a better level than any test drive could give you. I could write a very long post here but I will try to keep it brief.
I am still getting used to the way the numbers on the speedo increase. On paper and certainly at lower speeds it shouldn’t be all that different to the M5 - but it is. Significantly. It doesn’t actually feel all that much faster in a strange sort of way except at full throttle beyond 6k rpm - but if I accelerate so that I feel like I’m getting shoved at about the same rate as I did in the M5 and actually look at the speedo, it is absolutely insane how much faster I am travelling. I need to completely recalibrate my senses as I cannot yet quite fathom the immediacy with which big speeds appear on the dashboard. I think the refinement of it all helps mask a significant chunk of the speed which I wasn’t expecting at all.
The steering is sublime and gets better the more I get used to it. Initially, to me it felt a bit like it weighted up too quickly and made the car feel “heavy” but that’s just years in FR cars and compromised steering to train out of my brain. I need to remember my previous mid-engine car ownership experience and consciously apply it - and when I do I am very much rewarded. It is a total joy to actively thread down a country lane at legal speeds (or indeed at any speed).
The ride is superb. I don’t mean “for a McLaren” or “for a sporty car” I mean in general, compared to almost anything it is eerily good. It is definitely better than anything else I was looking at, better than the M5 and probably on par with the Range Rover. Not as quiet by a long chalk but in pure physical comfort terms it is sensational. How they’ve done it I don’t know but it is magical to be in a car like this driving down cobbled streets in total comfort.
Finally, the measure of customer service is rarely when buying something and invariably when things go wrong does the truth of an organisation emerge. I have noticed a slight (and I do mean slight) clicking when I open the driver side door. The passenger side is silent so I put a call in to the dealer to ask if it is normal/expected for such a noise to be there. They offered me a slot straight away to come down and demonstrate the noise to them and get an opinion on it. I only had to open the door once for them to confirm that no, the noise is not normal. The master technician said it would be only the second time he’d seen the issue in his many years of working on these cars and the gas strut needs to be replaced. While I was there I also asked him about a couple of other absolutely minuscule items I had noticed (like the frunk being more difficult to close than I anticipated but only when it is a cold day) and all of them were acknowledged, understood, diagnosed and are being addressed without question. Frankly I wouldn’t have even bothered with anything so trivial on any previous car I’ve owned but they are bending over backwards to help as they want the cars to be absolutely perfect. The entire experience was superb and exactly the opposite of what The Internet would have you believe about dealing with warranty stuff at McLaren.
As promised elsewhere, here is a mini review of my courtesy car, a 2022 McLaren 720S!
As mentioned, the GT has a few little things that need to be sorted so while they are attending to that I have use of this 720S. I did shortlist a 720S Luxury but decided it was a compromise too far from what I needed the car to do so this is a great opportunity to really see what life would have been like had I gone the other way.
This car is in an interesting spec and not one I personally would have gone for myself but they did it for a display of "you can have the car configured any way you want if your pockets are deep enough" I think. It is McLaren Orange (not Papaya Spark like my car) with a dark grey metallic frunk lid, spoiler and rear bumper with a dark blue stripe running front to back down the middle of the car. There are other dark blue bits here and there. I'll take some better pictures of the front when I get some time and you'll get a better idea of what I'm talking about. The interior has the manual seats which are not especially uncomfortable but neither are they comfortable. They hold you well enough in the right places but they are very firm. I certainly prefer the comfy electric memory seats in my GT!
Speaking of things that are better in the GT, the infotainment and screens are much better than in the 720S. I honestly don't think I could live with the system in the 720S, it is pretty much as bad as the system in my Dad's Mitsubishi Outlander. The screens are visibly dated by any modern standard and coming from the GT it is immediately quite noticeable. With this being a 2022 car I thought they might have filtered the newer screen tech into the parts bin for the 720S but no. Audio is still B&W in this car but it is different, the speakers look smaller and it is either not quite as good or the extra road noise of the 720S makes it harder to hear music when on the move. Other than that, despite McLaren's claims the GT cabin is roomier and so on, it isn't. Or at least not in any meaningful way. My head is about 1.5cm from the roof in the GT and it is about 4cm from the roof in the 720S which probably helps that feel. Width is not noticeable inside the cabin but on the road the 720S definitely feels narrower.
Performance is stratospheric. As fast as the GT is, this is on another level entirely. I was convinced by my test drive that the 720S was too much car to be responsibly enjoyed on UK public roads and this extended experience is just confirming it. I know the measured numbers say the 720S is 7.8s to 124mph and the GT is 9.0 but it feels at least 50% faster than the GT even if it isn't. Part of that is down to how refined the GT is in comparison, part of it is the extra 100bhp, part of it is the way the power is delivered. Part of it might be McLaren heavily sandbagging the performance claims. Whatever the recipe might be, the overall impression is of a car that is sensationally fast. I truly cannot begin to convey in words the reality of what this is like to someone who hasn't experienced it for themselves. I don't think I have driven anything on the road quite as potent as this car. For reference, the new M5cs does 0-124mph in 10.4s, a Ferrari F40 did it in about 11s and the "holy trinity" hypercars were all just under 7s. Rapid.
Noise is seemingly always a "thing" when people talk about McLaren. The 720S sounds very different to the GT in tone and loudness and I think overall it is a bit more brash. I love how in-your-face the noise is, it is a lot higher pitched than the GT which is more of a baritone sound. My GT has the optional sports exhaust and I think this 720S has one too and I would say that the 720S in its quietest mode is as loud as the GT in Sport. Full chat in the 720S is a wonderful noise to my ears. No, it isn't a Ferrari V12 or anything like it but it is still a supercar soundtrack to relish while we still can!
Overall, very happy with it as a courtesy car (but come on, how could I not be?!). I do think I've made the right call buying the GT for what I want from a car plus it won't ruin every other car for me in terms of performance like a 720S long term would...
As mentioned, the GT has a few little things that need to be sorted so while they are attending to that I have use of this 720S. I did shortlist a 720S Luxury but decided it was a compromise too far from what I needed the car to do so this is a great opportunity to really see what life would have been like had I gone the other way.
This car is in an interesting spec and not one I personally would have gone for myself but they did it for a display of "you can have the car configured any way you want if your pockets are deep enough" I think. It is McLaren Orange (not Papaya Spark like my car) with a dark grey metallic frunk lid, spoiler and rear bumper with a dark blue stripe running front to back down the middle of the car. There are other dark blue bits here and there. I'll take some better pictures of the front when I get some time and you'll get a better idea of what I'm talking about. The interior has the manual seats which are not especially uncomfortable but neither are they comfortable. They hold you well enough in the right places but they are very firm. I certainly prefer the comfy electric memory seats in my GT!
Speaking of things that are better in the GT, the infotainment and screens are much better than in the 720S. I honestly don't think I could live with the system in the 720S, it is pretty much as bad as the system in my Dad's Mitsubishi Outlander. The screens are visibly dated by any modern standard and coming from the GT it is immediately quite noticeable. With this being a 2022 car I thought they might have filtered the newer screen tech into the parts bin for the 720S but no. Audio is still B&W in this car but it is different, the speakers look smaller and it is either not quite as good or the extra road noise of the 720S makes it harder to hear music when on the move. Other than that, despite McLaren's claims the GT cabin is roomier and so on, it isn't. Or at least not in any meaningful way. My head is about 1.5cm from the roof in the GT and it is about 4cm from the roof in the 720S which probably helps that feel. Width is not noticeable inside the cabin but on the road the 720S definitely feels narrower.
Performance is stratospheric. As fast as the GT is, this is on another level entirely. I was convinced by my test drive that the 720S was too much car to be responsibly enjoyed on UK public roads and this extended experience is just confirming it. I know the measured numbers say the 720S is 7.8s to 124mph and the GT is 9.0 but it feels at least 50% faster than the GT even if it isn't. Part of that is down to how refined the GT is in comparison, part of it is the extra 100bhp, part of it is the way the power is delivered. Part of it might be McLaren heavily sandbagging the performance claims. Whatever the recipe might be, the overall impression is of a car that is sensationally fast. I truly cannot begin to convey in words the reality of what this is like to someone who hasn't experienced it for themselves. I don't think I have driven anything on the road quite as potent as this car. For reference, the new M5cs does 0-124mph in 10.4s, a Ferrari F40 did it in about 11s and the "holy trinity" hypercars were all just under 7s. Rapid.
Noise is seemingly always a "thing" when people talk about McLaren. The 720S sounds very different to the GT in tone and loudness and I think overall it is a bit more brash. I love how in-your-face the noise is, it is a lot higher pitched than the GT which is more of a baritone sound. My GT has the optional sports exhaust and I think this 720S has one too and I would say that the 720S in its quietest mode is as loud as the GT in Sport. Full chat in the 720S is a wonderful noise to my ears. No, it isn't a Ferrari V12 or anything like it but it is still a supercar soundtrack to relish while we still can!
Overall, very happy with it as a courtesy car (but come on, how could I not be?!). I do think I've made the right call buying the GT for what I want from a car plus it won't ruin every other car for me in terms of performance like a 720S long term would...
Super, super happy with how the wheels have turned out. BMW Ferric Grey II remains one of the best wheel colours to my eyes and that is *exactly* what these wheels are painted in. Not a colour match, I gave them the paint code and they ordered the correct BMW paint.
I was a bit nervous as to if the colour would work with the Papaya Spark or not but I needn’t have worried, it works amazingly well and pops even more in the flesh than it does in photos.