The McLaren philosophy - The pure perfection (Part 3)

The McLaren philosophy - The pure perfection (Part 3)

While the speed is intoxicating, the way it corners is addictive. It takes a few bends to get the dosage right, but then you can get off-your-face high on the precision and accuracy of the chassis. The first curve taken in angst revealed how good the brakes are. They decimated the speed and we just cruised around the bend. The pedal has a semi-racer feel to it, the assistance is only minimal, so you can give it a good heave without running into any ABS nonsense. You can leave the braking very late, and there’s very little dive, even from quite a clip.

Opening the dihedral doors on the early models required rubbing your fingers along some magic spot on the door

The recorded ABS stopping distance doesn’t reflect how good these picks are; the McLaren just about took a layer of chips off the road when we conducted the ABS stoppie. It’s yet another reason why coarse chip roads are crap; they increase stopping distances when they are hot.

A new coupe starts at $379,000, but there is a raft of options available

Once you’ve readjusted to McLaren levels of cornering composure, the 12C becomes so easy to place in a bend. The steering is quick, the front end responding instantly and is no doubt helped by the brake steer function. There’s plenty of feedback too but you hardly ever need to make a mid-corner adjustment. This car could get away with having almost zero feel and it wouldn’t matter. You can bet that the front end will have more grip than you have gumption on road. Even through wide, open bends, the front seems unstickable. Ably assisting is the suspension. It manages to glide over most road surfaces unfazed in Sport mode, and it keeps the car all but dead level through curves. With that maintained composure, the sidewalls are hardly stressed, and neither really is the driver. The front aero spats that help guide the air around the front wheels touched down a couple of times, but otherwise ground clearance isn’t much of an issue. Though the steering can snag in a rutted bend, it doesn’t corrupt your line. Want to win Targa this year? Buy one of these.

It’s the quickest car we’ve strapped ourselves into on home soil

Is the MP4-12C too clinical? Probably. But you have to admire what McLaren has achieved here. This thing is all but unflappable on road, and needs a race track to test its limits properly. With that in mind, we like that you can add stuff to the car if want to, or leave it fairly standard. A new coupe starts at $379,000, but there is a raft of options available. Leather trim is extra, for instance, as is sat nav but all the go-fast hardware is standard, save for the carbon brakes of the test car, a cool $21k option. The test car also had the full Meridian surround sound system, supposedly one of the best available in this market segment, but we never turned it on. We’d opt for perhaps a set of the super-lightweight forged rims at $8250 (which also require the $1380 tyre pressure monitoring system) and leave it at that. But if you’re likely to use your 12C a little more, expect to add around $20k-30k worth of extras. Opting for sat nav, front and rear sensors, leather trim, a wheel upgrade and some carbon bits would easily account for that.

With the Ferrari 458 starting at $534k before options, and the new Lambo Huracán at least a year away, there is only one mid-engine supersports car to consider this year.