This is what car reviews look like in New York City dead stopped and we're off
god damn it
but notice it's pretty dark out that's because it's really early in the morning
that's because I want to go for a drive but I live in New York think of this
city like a grand experiment by the world's greatest minds but they gave it
to a negligent drunk to manage so anything that's not actively broken is
just annoying so it's traffic and terrible roads and I have this mclaren
570s
and that thing deserves more than sitting in traffic during 4 miles an
hour so that's why I'm up at the crack of dawn to get in their car and go find
a good place to drive to New York I just want to see if it's possible it's the
essential New York City question where do you go if you need a bit of calm if
you want to say just sit in your supercar and fuss with the controls and
maybe stay on the gas for more than eight seconds at a time
okay so I found some peace and quiet I actually don't even want to tell you
where I am afraid traffic is gonna show up I'm actually just in a big parking
lot in the Rockaways the idea here is that you know normally you you have them
McLaren any McLaren you have any car like this you look at it and you say
look how low it is look how aerodynamic it is listen to the engine that thing
should be on a race track and truly it should but most of the time they're not
and you know New York is a place where a lot of people own cars like this there's
a lot of money here a lot of bankers who stole a lot of money etc etc this car
the mclaren 570s is MacLaren's entry-level car so this is an a' Clarins
version of a car if you were doing the proper mclaren supercar experience you
would fly to England and you know you'd have somebody taking care of you to show
you the car probably some man named Nigel in a tight blue suit I'm sure who
would take you through things like the infotainment system and how to open the
engine cover which we still haven't been able to figure out how to do I don't
have a Nigel I just sort of M in this car and have to figure it out myself so
we are now going to figure out how to adjust the seat I suppose I'm a little
far up so that is one thing I don't even know if you can see this I can't show
you how to adjust the seat because I can't see how to adjust the seat you
have to shove your hands down in here and then there are just a whole bunch of
buttons and they make no logical sense to my fingers so I will just start yeah
okay that goes back oh okay it's gotta be reverse for that just this is very
uncommon this is a yet another button that makes this eco there are two
buttons that makes a seat go forward okay there we go two buttons to go
forward and one button to go back and again I can't figure out any sort of
logic to it because I can't see the damn thing that's about right alright so
we're in Drive parking brake is over here and we are off New York City is a
real serious real-world test of any car really but especially kind of a super
car even MacLaren's entry-level supercar like the 570s
i mean everything about this says supercar the driving experience says
supercar and the thing about supercars is they make you want to drive faster
all the time everything is telling you put your foot down hear that engine
noise you know feel the steering and the
steering is unbelievably sharp here you just want to push the car all the time
and that's just not what driving around here is like
so what'd you get inside of this car is what you expect of a McLaren I mean it's
a supercar after all and it very much has the supercar feel you know
everything from this sort of beautiful spindly flat-bottom steering wheel with
the carbon-fiber shifters to this just basic wide you know expanse of Alcantara
more carbon-fiber bits very very simple interface you know very simple
infotainment interface and sort of a digital gauge cluster and really not
much else to be honest I mean I was convinced that there is a glove box down
here but I looked for 20 minutes and unless it is really well hidden there's
no glove box down there which means the only storage you have you this little
armrest cubbyhole and then you have this weird thing which is a door mounted sort
of area where you could store I suppose for cellphones or several granola bars
and that's it you have a couple door up here you have a little bit of space to
like put the key or a phone I suppose other than that that is all the storage
you get there is a front in the front it's a little bigger than you know it
looks actually you could get a decent sized suitcase in there not more than
one so in terms of storage you are definitely with supercar storage which
is to say fucking none you know the ride is you know on the way over and even
just now you know this is just on a kind of
crappy parking lot you can really feel each and every bump as you would expect
I mean this is a very low car it's a very stiff suspension that being said
MacLaren's done quite a wonderful job you know in the comfort modes this is a
pretty supple ride as far as these cars go these sports seats are going to get a
little you know stiff if you're putting any sort of time into a drive you know
after a couple hours these are going to be uncomfortable and really to that
point I mean New York is one of the places it's one of the few places where
you're going to sit in a McLaren in a car like this and more often than not
you are going to be thinking about a crossover because in a crossover you
know you're going to have individual climate settings you could have
massaging seats you could have a heated steering wheel it's going to be easy to
hook up your phone and play your podcasts which I believe you can do here
I have yet to be successful at it but I do believe you can do it but all that to
say it's a comfortable place to spend time just sort of sitting in traffic not
thinking about driving I'm not sure having a car like this in a city like
this makes any sense whatsoever now we're going to leave the safety of
the parking lot and go out into the real world
you
this really is a pretty wonderful car even in this New York car review which
is kind of the world's slowest star review you can just tell that this is
pretty special there's a 3.2 liter twin-turbo v8 in here 7-speed
dual-clutch gearbox very quick nice shifts you know this as the sports
seriese this forgoes whoo damn it these potholes are that the sports series 4
goes a lot of the really fancy stuff you don't get active aerodynamics you don't
get that trick cross-linked adaptive suspension but what you do get is that
really great engine which you know 3.2 seconds 0 to 60 and 0 to 100 and 6.3
seconds both of which are exactly the same as the iconic McLaren f1 car from
the 90s exact same figures and on top of that you know you get this incredibly
sporty feel but the steering is just lovely and the brakes great I mean
really you know they have that sort of small travel like a lot of super
high-performance cars but they're easy to modulate you don't feel like it's
sort of a binary off-and-on choice or either off brake or you're totally on
brake there's a lot of subtlety to it
and in traffic oh my god damn that's a lot of traffic this is sort of high
speed driving damn it and there's a merge there's
always traffic the traffic is always made worse by construction on top of
that everybody's a well this is it I mean this is sort of what the daily
experience is like when you consider that the competitors here the Audi r8
v10 of the Porsche 911 Turbo around there in terms of price and specs ooh
those feel like very different machines because they feel so much more like cars
they are more comfortable they feel more like a place where you want to sit in
traffic and fiddle at the infotainment and you know you can kind of go about
your day this feels properly super really in a way that those cars don't
but it comes with a compromise it's just a different idea of a machine but I can
tell you what I'm going you know 40 miles an hour on the Belt Parkway right
now and this feels every bit the supercar I mean if you're if you're
buying a car like this to bring it to the valet and have them fuss over you
and you know boot somebody else's car so they can park yours in front
New York's a great place don't a supercar
you actually like driving you actually want to get some open road bring it out
and really feel what something like this McLaren can do that takes an effort
I don't know that you can do that within two hours of New York City this really
really is not a great place to own a supercar
you