So the 675LT is an amazing track car and if that were as far as it went I’d probably not be writing these words now because creating such a car from a 650S would not be that difficult: you’d just turn it into a super-stiff, utterly uncivilised road-legal racer. What is rather more impressive is that while the 675LT will stir your soul, ripple your cheeks and blow your mind on the track, it remains an immensely usable and genuinely comfortable road car, too.  Key to this is McLaren’s interconnected suspension. It means that while the car has been stiffened by almost a third at the front and close to two thirds at the rear, the ride remains compliant enough to take on one of England’s toughest road routes and soak up every dip, crest, lump, bump and pothole along its unpredictable, inconsistent, ever-changing length. Even noise levels in the car remain sensible unless you select Sport mode, which instructs the engine to cut the ignition during gearshifts, allowing fuel to pass into the titanium exhausts, there to ignite in gloriously indulgent, entirely unnecessary pops and bangs.  The 675LT is a big step for McLaren, bigger than that which transformed the 12C into the 650S. Purists will tell you that because it’s more than 200kg lighter than a P1 it’s actually better to drive than the flagship hypercar. I don’t agree because ultimately the 675 lacks the P1’s bewildering low-down punch and race-car downforce, but I understand and respect the view.  So why, then, is McLaren only making 500, making it as rare as a LaFerrari and not a lot less scarce than the 375-off P1? Essentially it’s to bolster the image of a company that’s only been a full-time road car manufacturer for four years. McLaren would rather the car sold out than take short-term profits today and pay the price tomorrow in the form of poor residual values. And insofar as the 675LT has indeed sold out, and did so before any journalist wrote a word about driving it, that job has been done.  But privately McLaren also acknowledges demand has exceeded expectations. There is no question of McLaren adding to the 500, but a distinctly different car still benefitting from some or more of those modifications? A convertible Spider version for instance? McLaren will say only it is aware of this pent-up demand and is not in the business of letting down either extant or prospective customers, it’s under discussion and nothing has been decided. I suspect, however, that once all the reviews have been read, the gentle knocking on McLaren’s door of customers wanting something similar will become a banging too loud to ignore.  For the truth is a McLaren offering nine tenths of the performance of a P1 for less than one third of the money. If such a thing as a supercar bargain could ever exist, surely this is it.
Andrew Frankel almost runs out of superlatives as he emerges from the track-focused McLaren 675LT, because it's also a genuinely usable road car