First test of the McLaren GT 2020: heart of supercar, finesse of the big tourer

The latest trend for fun, fast, and luxurious car manufacturers is to diversify and expand into the lucrative SUV market. But not at McLaren. Instead, McLaren Automotive officials have decided that what their customers want, in addition to their range of road and track-based supercars, is a great traveler, a true McLaren GT.

McLaren had already tried the GTs: The 570GT was a supercar with a pledge of practice and the oldest Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren was a fever dream of a bygone era. Yet the builder claims that the McLaren GT, aptly named, is his first big tourer.

While McLaren initially focused on automakers like Ferrari and Lamborghini with its supercars, the GT targets the British Aston Martin and Bentley. Both make cars that meet the list of requirements of a great traveler: powerful, fast, comfortable, luxurious and with a certain degree of practicality and ease of use. the Aston Martin DB11 AMR and Bentley Continental GT meet all these requirements and are certainly the kind of cars that come to mind when you imagine a new grand touring: front engine, rear-wheel drive, two or more plane, semi-practical trunk .

McLaren is not in agreement. The GT adheres to the company's proven formula: a carbon chassis, two seats and a mid-engine configuration … just like any other McLaren. The GT has a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 developing 612 horsepower, a torque of 465 feet and a time of 3.1 seconds between 0 and 60 miles at the time. All this sounds familiar.

On paper, the statistics place the GT at the heart of the current McLaren supercars. And if the style of the GT is more sober than that of the 570S or 720SIn the absence of some of the bolder design features that these cars have in favor of clean lines and an elegant silhouette, it is still recognizable as a McLaren.

McLaren is not in agreement. The GT adheres to the proven formula of the company: a carbon chassis, two seats and a central engine. The question then is: what does it do differently? In the end, the answer is considerable.

The engine may have started its life and was to become a supercar, but it has been significantly modified to accommodate a different type of driving. New pistons, collector and smaller turbos soften the power provided. The torque is now available sooner and longer, leaving you less surprises when the tachometer needle turns right.

The sound of the engine is actually an advantage of the packaging of the McLaren GT. The longer body lengthened the exhaust, giving a lower and richer note. For a bi-turbocharged engine, it seems closer to an old-fashioned V8 than anything that carries a McLaren badge.

But it's not just the engine that has been manipulated. The brakes and steering are tuned to be stable and comfortable at speed rather than strong and responsive. The steering wheel, throttle and brakes are heavy, which may surprise you if you are in a GT that is waiting for it to drive like the 570S. You may need to put a little more pressure on the GT's central pedal to eliminate any real speed, but the advantage is that you can be ultra precise.

Rather than being able to stop the car running by lightly pressing the brakes, the GT makes sure that the driving inputs, even the most random ones, are smooth and measured. Likewise, the steering requires more effort, but gives the car more calm and stability at speed.

Although the response of the throttle can be adjusted through the different driving modes – Comfort, Sport and Track -, it seems radically different from similar settings offered by other McLaren. If you wish, the car can still run like a supercar, take off and gain a lot of speed in a very short time. The difference here is that you have to ask specifically.

All modern supercars are more accessible than suggested by the numbers of a technical sheet, which makes them easy to drive in town without having the impression of being the slightest pedal mistake. But the McLaren GT goes even further by facilitating fast driving. What you miss to reach all the highs and maximize your cornering speed has been replaced by the opportunity to enjoy the speed more casually. The McLaren GT is indulgent and predictable, no matter how fast.

McLaren says the suspension is equipped with proactive dampers, which not only prepare the road as it is, but use driver inputs to predict how to install the car a few milliseconds in advance. The result is a car that you can really mistreat. Press hard on the throttle, then on the brakes, combined with sharp turns, and you will not be punished for any type of rolling or pitching in the car. Drive on a bump, however, and the GT absorbs it impressively.

My test run with the GT started in a small coastal town in the south of France, which immediately allowed the car to prove that new efforts had been made to make this McLaren more practical as a diver. daily. The higher ride height associated with a better approach angle means that you can take the average retarder without having to use the nose lift. Although the steering is quite heavy, it is not too troublesome for driving in the city – at least until you try to make a lot of three-point turns. In this case, you will have the impression of catching the missing arm in the gym.

Once out of town and with the opportunity to apply a little more force to the pedal to go, the McLaren GT really starts to shine. The speed increases steadily, if not very quickly, unless you really bury your foot. You're never trapped with a huge acceleration, but you can upgrade yourself effortlessly.

Climbing through the mountains in case of sudden braking and hairpin bends, the GT simply refuses to behave badly. Even if your driving skill leaves something to be desired, the GT takes it up. By raising the brakes halfway, alternating braking, all these types of reckless entries should make sure that a car is moving at a higher or lower speed than average in all turns. However, the GT never lets you really get out of control. You may feel like you're pushing hard, but if you can not switch everything to Track mode and disengage as many security systems as you can, you'll have trouble finding the limits of the GT.

And why would you? A frequent traveler must be fast, of course, but the way it delivers performance is even more important. A great traveler is not there to teach you how to become a better driver or save time on the tour. To make driving hours seem like an opportunity and not a chore.

But what about the practical aspect? To increase the cargo space to something more powerful than your average supercar, the GT's engine has been lowered with the largest number of parts likely to heat up on the side. This also results in the apparent width of the GT at the hips and explains the considerable lateral sockets. This also gives the GT a bigger trunk than the one I've ever seen with a mid-engined car.

McLaren says the GT can organize a set of golf clubs or two sets of skis. I had neither one nor the other with me while I was driving, but I had two suitcases for two people, a large camera bag and an even larger suitcase that I had. An airline would call oversized. Everything is fine. With room to spare. Looking at the luggage compartment, it does not seem immediately practical. It is deep and extends high behind the seats to the rear bumper, but is also shallow, just a few inches from the rear. However, with the right luggage choice and the full use of the generous front trunk, you can carry as much luggage as you can in a family sedan.

That said, you can quickly lose visibility through the rear-view mirror as soon as you charge to the rear and you want to make sure everything you've set up is secure because the poorly-fixed objects will project to the height of the head during a sudden braking. In addition, even when the hottest part of the engine is away from the luggage compartment and several layers of thermal insulating material are placed, the luggage compartment can heat up. The intense heat from the engine is spared, but it's not a place you'd like to keep ice for a long time.

The interior of the GT is equipped with comfortable seats, an elegant design around the cab and a Bowers & Wilkins sound system of sound at least as good as that of the engine . Even the infotainment system has been enhanced with a new 10-core processor and maps provided by Here, the same company that provides the navigation software to BMW and Mercedes. You still can not get Apple CarPlay or Android Autounfortunately, but the system is a step forward compared to McLaren. Which means, still not great, but easier to live with.

Nevertheless, I have only a few minor complaints with this car, none of which is enough to put me off. At $ 210,000 to start, you are in the same stadium as the Aston Martin DB11 AMR and the Bentley Continental GT. Considering it's the first true McLaren GT car, it's impressive to be able to deal with heavy trucks so quickly. But that's what McLaren has done from the beginning: getting into the party and sitting at the table.

As a great tourer, the McLaren GT combines practicality, maneuverability, performance and comfort in a way that really surprised me. Rather than simply repacking a 570S, everything that needed to be reviewed to make it a single car was solved. If McLaren can do for the GT market what it has done for the supercar sector, then the competition has to be careful.

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