McLaren GT 2020 Review – International

It’s the brake pedal, I think. That brake pedal, belligerently proud of its relentless anchoring urgency, is the first part of the McLaren GT that confirms it’s not, actually, a Grand Tourer in the same sense that a Bentley or Mercedes-Benz owner might understand.

GTs are typically a bit softer than hard-core sports cars to make them easier to live with, especially on long days at the wheel. They’re at their best while hauling across a continent in comfort and unfazed briskness, but never haste.

The rule book says they are strong of engine, effortless of acceleration, elegant for two people (whether or not there’s a rear seat), comfortable for hours on end and capable of luggage work.

They also look classier than their brawny counterparts, with the designers tilting at elegance or handsomeness rather than the air-bending drama of their faster brethren.

And the brake pedal in the McLaren GT, which needs a solid shove just to stop the car creeping away at traffic lights, doesn’t fit in with any of that.

McLaren could otherwise have gotten away with the lesser make-you-go-hmmm bits that also don’t quite fit the Grand Tourer mould. Then you add them together to a brake pedal so firm that it feels like walking up a step, and there’s a collective anti-body of GT work.

The reason the brakes – metal by trade, carbon-ceramic by decision – feel like this is to act as a comforting link to the hard-core McLarens for the hard-core McLaren drivers. At least, that’s what McLaren says.

Somehow, that smacks of hiding development convenience or engineering dogma, because the McLaren GT surely wasn’t built to conquest 720S buyers.

What other grand-tourer owners could McLaren be targeting, then, with the longest (4.7-metre) car it’s ever built this side of the cheerfully loony Speedtail?

Well, the two-seat layout limits its access to a sliver of the owners of the most popular of the genre’s toys, like the Porsche 911 range or the big ends of the BMW 8 Series and S-Class Coupe or Bentley’s Continental GT.

Those cars all have at least a five-tenths scale model of a rear seat. Even if you can’t sit comfortably in the back, a token rear seat is by far the easiest place to throw a sports or computer bag or even a weekend’s luggage.

By comparison, the McLaren GT is severely limited by its carbon-fibre chassis tub, with the top-end of the tub’s rear modified from its 720S donor. But it was modified to create a long shape for luggage, not to slide in two tiny seats.

So the words Aston Martin get bandied around a lot when McLaren talks about rivals for the GT, but even McLaren admits its car “challenges the conventions” of the GT world.

The upside is that it challenges and surpasses them in speed terms and it’s right up there in comfort, too.

The McLaren GT is a stupendously fast car in a straight line, point-to-point or cross country, with contributions coming from just about every single engineering diagram.

It all starts with two key parts: the MonoCell II-T monocoque and the 3994cc twin-turbo V8, mounted behind the passenger compartment, and right beneath the luggage area.

It delivers 456kW of power at 7500rpm and its 630Nm of torque is on tap from 5500 to 6500rpm, and it’s all pumped through the rear wheels via a wonderfully fast seven-speed dual-clutch transmission.

The engine is one of the GT’s core strengths yet, in the same way as the brake pedal, one of its core grand touring weaknesses.

It forgoes any sweetness or burbling menace or achingly tempting timbre changes in favour of astonishing effectiveness, come what may out of the tailpipes.

It’s nicely quiet and calm in its Comfort setting, but switching to Sport or Track diverts the exhaust gases (of which there are many, with a WLTP rating of 270g/km of CO2) through the shorter, louder exit paths.

Never coarse, the Sport mode nonetheless delivers an industrial sound that, rather than an inspiring one (which is true to McLaren’s form of following engineering paths over emotive ones) and it simply gets louder with increased effort, following its pronounced turbo whistle from about 3000rpm to 4500rpm.

An oversight is that it’s not possible to select the Sport mode’s wonderfully crisp gear shifting and throttle control with the Comfort mode’s more soothing engine note. The Sport mode exhaust is just too loud and monotone for long hauls, but that’s it for criticisms of the engine.

It can be forgiven a lot for the way it delivers. There is still a linear build-up of performance, slightly at odds with modern whack-and-hold torque curves, and then it elevates itself to an entirely different level as it approaches 5000rpm. Beyond that, it’s just ferocious.

It has a Launch Control mode (but we were warned not to use it outside controlled conditions such as, ahem, the hotel driveway), and if you use it the rear-end will hook up, wake up and you’ll feel like you’re on the flinging end of the trebuchet on your way to 100km/h in 3.2 seconds.

The McLaren spends another 5.8 seconds getting you to 200km/h and it won’t run out of acceleration until 326km/h.

It feels effortless but it doesn’t sound effortless, and that’s a core difficulty for a GT. Well, it does sound effortless in Comfort mode, but then the engine reacts to the throttle with a touch more sogginess than it might.

It never has a problem with going or overtaking, or punching out of corners, though. It has pop. It has muscle. It has overwhelming effectiveness. But it has scarcely any aural charm at all (Maserati’s GranTurismo is probably taking most of that with it into retirement).

No such equivocation about the transmission, which switches character effortlessly from soft-sliding clutch changes to cracking track shifts, all without any head toss or even a trace of wobble onto the suspension.

The beautiful aluminium shift paddles add a touch of class (ditto every jewel-like aluminium knob in the cabin) and you can shift up and down on the same side of the wheel if you prefer.

McLarens have always ridden well but the GT is something else. It debuts McLaren’s Proactive Damping Control, with comfort, sport and track modes, and it is everything it says on the tin. It reads the road ahead using its sensors and predicts what each damper is about to need.

Only occasional large, square-edged potholes deliver a sharp crack through the cabin (it’s a carbon-tub thing), but everything else is dispensed with as nothing more than an input the driver should be made aware of.

It oozes over creases or undulations, it deals with shifting road crowns with disdain, it can be safely and securely pointed at any apex, on any road surface, with complete confidence, and it never, ever shifts its line until it’s out of grip.

It’s a chassis that always dictates the terms to the road, rather than the other way around, and leaves its occupants blissfully unaware of the complexity of those negotiations.

Another key to this is a steering system that is beyond sublime, with one of the best steering wheels on the market today. Its shape fits perfectly to any situation and a wide range of hand sizes (we did a quick poll amongst those present).

More crucially, so does the feedback coming up from the front tyres into that succulent steering wheel. Its initial inputs are perfectly judged for both weight and accuracy, moving the nose gently, but positively, to reflect the long-haul nature of GT life.

Beyond that it helms harder and sharper, but always with gentle, unobtrusive feedback about exactly how much grip you’ve used and how much you have left.

It’s a joyful thing, made more joyful because you’re in constant contact with it. It’s almost enough to cancel out the engine’s incessant blaring, but not quite.

It can do all of this because the stiffness of the carbon tub means McLaren is only tuning the suspension to deal with the road’s exertions, not with the twisting of the chassis.

And also because the McLaren GT only weighs 1530kg. For reference, the Bentley Continental GT weighs 2252kg and also costs $422,600 – more than the $400K McLaren GT.

Just like the rest of the car, there are some striking hits, misses and philosophical step-changes in the GT’s cabin.

The most obvious of those is from a long, long, long, thin, thin, thin, glass-covered, engine-floored luggage area, which doesn’t suggest the McLaren GT as an ideal courier for ice cream.

That’s why a big gulp of the air coming in through the side-mounted intakes is to cool the underside of the luggage area.

The exhaust temperature is about 500 degrees, but the cooling intake air pulls that down to 200 degrees, then McLaren claims the insulation material on the underside of the luggage area means it’s never more than 40 degrees.

But it’s also the longest and most awkwardly shaped 420-litre luggage space in the entire car industry. McLaren is offering custom luggage, which must look odd, given the space, all clad in an anti-slip, anti-mark material.

Yet a standard Rimowa bag, placed in the very back of the luggage area by a McLaren helper, rattled its corners on the liftback glass (the 150-litre frunk is a far better option). Even a simple computer bag mounted under the cargo net on the higher parts of the space blocks the entire rear view.

The forward view is excellent, though, and so is the ease at which that helps the Big Mac apex.

The interior is neat and comfortable, without dripping in luxury, though it doesn’t show a single trace of carbon-fibre, and there are thicker cushions for the new seats.

It’s as notable for what’s not here, by comparison to its foes, than what is. There is no active cruise control, no lane-departure warning system, no autonomous emergency braking and none of that tech that turns even the Volkswagen Polo into a lazier traffic-jam proposition than a $400K sports car.

There’s a solid roof, a panoramic glass version or an electrochromatically-tinting version, but it’s light and airy regardless of the options. For the passenger, it’s an interior that quickly becomes a bit, well, barren, even if the driver has a lot to keep busy with.

There’s the option of a 12-speaker Bowers and Wilkins audio system (yet the standard system has just four speakers) and there are Pioneer and Luxe equipment packs on top of the standard fare.

The infotainment contains a 10-Core processing unit, making it one of the fastest infotainment units out there and it’s surprisingly intuitive to operate, but the vertical 7.0-inch central screen is calmly functional, rather than absolute top-end, although the 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster is prettier.

It’s a slightly confused sell here. When the McLaren GT is running in its Comfort mode and the bends are curved gently, all is right in the McLaren world.

It can carry ridiculous mid-corner speed, and it carries it without a trace of drama or urgency. It’s jaw-droppingly comfortable on broken ground and oozes its way over lumpy apexes.

And it’s a wonderful thing around town at low speed (other than the massive brake-pedal shoves it needs), with that gearbox glittering like a star.

But the McLaren GT is very clearly building towards a niche within a niche within a niche here, because on black-and-white terms, it doesn’t compete with anything out there (save Aston Martin).

Sure, the shape of its luggage area might well accommodate golf clubs and skis, but it doesn’t fare so well with normal grand touring stuff like, I dunno, a suitcase.

I like it. I really do. It’s something of an achievement in and of itself, given the limitations of the two-seat carbon tub.

But with some softening of the brake pedal’s firmness, some music added to the engine note, and some more advanced driver-assistance systems, I’d love it enough to laugh off the oddball luggage area.

How much does the 2019 McLaren GT cost?
Price: $399,995 (plus on-road costs)
On sale: Fourth quarter 2019
Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo petrol V8
Output: 456kW/630Nm
Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch
Fuel: 11.9L/100km (WLTP)
CO2: 270g/km (WLTP)