Yes
(why?)My McLaren GT - Ownership Thread
- Thread starter DRZ
- Start date
(why?)
I was lucky enough to drive this yesterday, albeit only for a few minutes and up and down a taxi bit of a runway. I can't really say much apart from it's very, very quick (compared to my F80 M3) and the ride is utterly sublime. If anything it was the ride quality which surprised me the most, it went across a very bumpy and rough surface airfield like you would expect a 5 series to. Thanks again @DRZ.
It is one of the very reasons once you've had a mid-engine car it is hard for anything to rival the improved ride quality and superb vision out of them. Is one of the best features of the 458, visibility, ride and the noise.
Soldato
- Joined
- 27 Aug 2003
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- 9,814
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- West Midlands
Feel like I spotted you in Dudley a couple/few weeks back
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!
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
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
Soldato
- Joined
- 14 Apr 2014
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- 7,348
- Location
- Hampshire
18.1 really isn’t bad! In the 24 hours I had my S5 before going to Spain, I got 22 out of it 
And I don’t want to think about how many fewer horses it has
And I don’t want to think about how many fewer horses it has
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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...
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
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
