2020 McLaren GT Test Drive: Automobile All-Stars Contender
Can you have your supercar and tour it too?
Automobile's All-Stars awards are back, and this year we have one of the best fields of cars we've ever evaluated. In total, we invited 21 of our favorite new or significantly revised cars to find out which are the very best of the best. We've split them into Contenders and Winners, but let us make it clear: Every car invited to our All-Stars event is one of the most special cars on sale for 2020. Each day between March 8 and March 10, we'll bring you a new batch of Contenders, and on Wednesday, March 11, we'll announce our 2020AutomobileAll-Stars Winners.
McLaren's meteoric rise to supercar relevance has been putting high-dollar foes on alert since the MP4-12C reinvigorated the brand in 2011. The clean sheet cavalcade of carbon fiber has mostly focused on pure performance, which puts all the more pressure on the 2020 McLaren GT to strike grand touring gold, an arena that has only superficially been exploited by 2016's 570 GT.
While All-Star exotics like the Ferrari F8 Tributo and Porsche 911 Carrera S managed to quickly endear theAutomobileteam with their cohesive and charismatic personalities, the McLaren GT struggled to strike a chord. Admittedly, Woking's mission was daunting: tackle the seemingly contradictory missions of offering long-distance cushiness while retaining the brand's sharp, track-capable soul. And the $280,490 two-seater did not escape praise, including near-unanimous appreciation for its massively powerful 612-hp twin-turbo V-8. "Above 4,000 rpm, the thing does a Hulk," pro racer Andy Pilgrim said, "banging into the traction control and trying to swallow the horizon."
Yet appreciation for the outrageous powerplant was also countered by some bigger-picture shortcomings. "Yes, there's serious speed on tap," contributor Arthur St. Antoine said, "but it's not delivered with that razor-edged precision we've come to expect from the House of Bruce. " Detroit bureau chief Todd Lassa agreed: "The GT was ferocious running uphill on [Streets of Willow's] front-straight but then needed way too much brake before the turns."
Tellingly, certain Ghosts of All-Stars Past came back to haunt the GT. "I couldn't set it up in a way that I could really have fun with it, like I could in the 600 LT last year or the 720S the year before," social media editor Billy Rehbock said. Another consistently recurring theme was the difficulty in achieving balance between ride quality and handling sharpness. Lassa was "disappointed in the handling McLaren gave up in trying to balance against a decent ride." Pilgrim noted that "shock control over bumpy pavement was not great," and "[the] steering wheel bouncing in my hands was surprising and annoying."
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Not that the long-distance McLaren didn't earn kudos for its underlying ambition and modulated persona. "It's easy to approach its limits—not intimidating like most cars in this price range," senior editor Aaron Gold said. But its ultimate undoing could be attributed to its indeterminate personality, which had a difficult time straddling the line between its dual-purpose goals. Rehbock found it "too harsh to be a GT but too soft to be enjoyable on the track," and Gold's problem "is that it's not a real GT; they didn't back off the performance enough to make this a genuinely comfortable touring car."
Ultimately, those prevailing sentiments triggered a broader conversation about the GT's lofty goals. Although it didn't make it as one of the All-Stars elite, McLaren's latest nonetheless shows that the carmaker's ambitions span beyond hyper-focused track toys. For these relative newcomers at the road-going genre, the McLaren GT opens up the promising possibility of a more diversified future.
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Like many of my coworkers, my love for cars was cemented at a young age, thanks in part to Hot Wheels, car magazines, and every car poster I could afford when the book fair set up shop in my elementary school library. While most kids went straight for Where’s Waldo? and Goosebumps, I was torn between the poster of the Lamborghini Countach and the ’32 Ford hot rod with airbrushed flames on the cowling. In high school, I worked at Bergstrom's Antique Autos, a historic garage in Port Townsend, Washington. Surrounded by nearly a century of automotive history, I immersed myself in cleaning, sorting, and selling car parts and memorabilia. I also spent countless hours flipping through vintage car magazines and can comfortably say that I've looked through every Motor Trend, Car & Driver, Hot Rod, and Sports Car Graphic up until the early 1980s. Around the same time, I picked up photography—naturally, with cars as my main subject. Despite my high school photography teacher's advice to branch out, I stuck to my passion and attended every car show I could find. This led me to the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, where I earned a bachelor’s degree with a focus on automotive photography. I began my career at Motor Trend as a photography intern. After freelancing for a few years, I joined the Motor Trend team full-time in late 2010. My passion for cars and photography continues to fuel my work, and I hope it shines through in every shot.
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