GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: McLaren 570GT

UPDATE 26/02/2016 4:30am: McLaren has announced pricing of $406,800 plus on-road costs for the 570GT – $27,800 more than the 570S.

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Small changes can have big effects. In essence the McLaren 570GT is nothing more than a hatchback version of the McLaren Sports Series, with a glass panel at the back giving access to fractionally more luggage space.

Yet it’s being pitched as the “most luxurious and refined McLaren” to date, with company insiders admitting that it’s likely to become the brand’s highest volume model when it goes on sale later this year.

It’s also the most natural rival in the Sports Series family to cars like the Porsche 911 Turbo, combining effortless performance with a welcome extra dose of practicality.

No, it’s not up to lugging a wardrobe home from Ikea, but with 350 litres of storage between the rear hatch and the existing front storage space it’s more than spacious enough to extend potential trips away beyond lightly packed dirty weekends.

The glass hatchback is the major change, meaning the loss of the coupe’s flying buttresses and lengthening the GT’s roofline. The glass sits inside a carbon-fibre frame and is side-hinged, opening on different sides for left-hand drive and right-hand drive markets to make it easier to load the McLaren when it sits kerbside.

The GT also gets a standard glass roof, which makes the cabin feel far lighter and more spacious than the Sports Series Coupe. They are small changes, but yield a substantial transformation.

Mechanical changes are more limited. The engine and gearbox are exactly the same as those in the 570S, meaning a 419kW power output from McLaren’s familiar 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged V8, accompanied by 600Nm of torque and with drive sent to the rear wheels through a seven-speed twin-clutcher.

It weighs 1350kg ‘dry’, a 35kg increase over the 570S Coupe but with a fair chunk of that gain due to the shift to iron brake discs rather than the S’s standard carbon stoppers.

It’s fractionally slower, too – although we doubt that most owners are going to notice, with a claimed 3.4-second 0-100km/h time (two tenths adrift of the 570S), but an identical 330km/h top speed.

There have been some mechanical changes. Spring rates are reduced over those of the 570S, with the GT being 15 per cent softer at the front and 10 per cent softer at the rear, and other suspension settings retuned to match.

The steering ratio has been wound back by around 10 per cent to help with stability at high cruising speeds. And that rear spoiler also sits fractionally higher to take account of the loss of the aerodynamic assistance the coupe gets from its flying buttresses.

Pricing is similarly close, with McLaren pitching the GT and S as either-or purchases rather than being in a fixed hierarchy. In the UK the GT is only slightly more expensive than the 570S, which costs $379,000 in Australia, but with much of that difference coming from the GT’s more generous standard equipment levels.

It won’t be quite as sharp around a track as its coupe sister, but the GT’s extra practicality and more laid-back demeanour may well win it more friends in the long run.