We are huge McLaren fans here at Charlie Alpha Romeo, and I would say that outside of the 12C which was kind of the ugly brother in my opinion in the entire production line, the rest of them are a piece of art each. Pure perfection, from design, to sound to power.

The 570s is not only beautiful, but as opposed to the 650S which is really an optimized version of the 12C, is genuinely a new designed car by McLaren.

You could have paid a deposit about 3-4 months ago to be first in line for the November first batch delivered, and as some of them are starting to be delivered – Chris Harris was able to get his hands around one, and share with us his opinion. We thought we’ll share, hope you enjoy ..

It’s always better to not upgrade your car too much beyond what the factory allows you to customize at the point of purchase. One (painful) decision Porsche has made is to actually not allow anyone to customize the sound of the exhaust system, it sounds as it sounds.

Important to note that some 911s such as the GTS, GT3, and of course the GT3 RS do come with a button that if you click on it – there is more sound.

As for the rest of the 911s, even the Turbo S (which is the fastest of them all) come with a more modest exhaust sound, at least if compared to the likes of Lamborghini, Ferrari or McLaren that are equipped with more aggressive (but beautiful) sound.

Robert LeBron from Manhattan Motor Cars was kind to show us the 911 Turbo S 2015 sound, just in case you’re wondering.

GT3 RS

Lamborghini Huracan

I was always a McLaren fan, there is something about that car, from its legacy in Formula 1, to the way it looks, sounds and feels sitting in one. Really, it’s so beautiful it’s painful. But look, many people are McLaren fans, I’m not unique by any means being yet another one. Even car collector and comedian Jay Leno promoted Mclaren by visiting their technology center and publishing it on his popular YouTube show Jay Leno’s Garage, as well as recently owning their “Ultimate Series” P1 – first in America.

McLaren was originally founded in 1963 by New Zealander Bruce McLaren, who passionately led a team who started winning Grand Prix racing in 1968, having repeated success in some important races such as the Can-Am race. Bruce McLaren sadly died  in a testing accident in 1970, and McLaren team (who was a small one at the time, only ~25 drivers) took over and was able to win their first Formula One constructors’ championship in 1974. Over the years, McLaren had some of the most legendary drivers in the history driving it and winning races – drivers such as Niki Lauda (see below picture) and Ayrton Senna..

In 1992, McLaren had its first attempt at a production car with the McLaren F1, a three seat car, where the driver is located in the middle on its own, and it was fast. The F1 had a V12 and could product over 600 brake horsepower and would get to 65 mph in 3 seconds. This is early 90s we’re talking about, and for comparison Audi R8 which is their flagship sport car gets to 65 mph from 0 in 3.2 seconds.

Ever since the F1, and many years after – in 2009 McLaren revealed the design of its second production car, the 12C which came to market in 2011. The 12C was the beginning of an incredibly exciting new line of production cars,  inheriting the magic started with Bruce McLaren back in the 60s, and all the way to 50 years of experience with winning Formula 1 racing with legendary drivers – cars such as P1, 650S, and recently 675 LT and the 570s. McLaren’s methodology is that production cars are broken out to  3 groups, “Sports series”, the “Super series” and “Ultimate series”.

There is a lot more to tell about McLaren, but the purpose was to provide a brief glance into why I’m not alone or unique being passionate about this company and their cars.

ButI was wrong thinking that McLaren wins because it’s an incredible car company. McLaren wins because they never focused about building the next best car, bur rather on long term innovation and research that can scale to multiple lines of products that are determined to be best in their field — cars included.

Introducing McLaren Technology Center, located on a gorgeous 500,000 m² site with 4 buildings (see pictures below), one of them dedicated for research called McLaren Applied Technologies. I met Geoff McGrath, Chief Innovation Officer who joined early when the team consisted of 3 people, bringing 20 years of experience to join hands with McLaren pursue of groundbreaking conceptual design, development and engineering. Geoff talked about McLaren for 20 minutes before he said “cars” for the fist time; it was one of the most inspiring talks I’ve heard, helping me understand the real secret behind McLaren. It is truly a company bringing a unique volume of soul and history, with laser focus on technology and innovation — how to win the bigger companies without being the biggest. McLaren perfected the notion of analyzing the intersection of human body behavior with other physical objects, researching what separates a winning behavior from a failing one. And let me tell you, the sky is truly the limit; McLaren is partnering with market leaders of many fields to try and re-think together about how to do things in a new and better way, whether that’s how to drill oil without risking life, optimizing airplanes landing process, how to better operate in surgery, ride a bicycle – and last but not least – driving supercars. Here is a video on YouTube about Geoff you may like speaking about data driven design.

I will leave you with some pictures I received approval to take, as most of the center is prohibited from using your mobile phone, and I encourage you to re-think about your own business and why you should win; probably not because of “what you do”, but rather “why you do it”. I also want to thank George Farquhar from McLaren who hosted us during this unique day.

The new McLaren P1 GTRMcLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt Legendary Nike Lauda’s McLarenMcLaren Technology Center in Surrey at the UK

Jay Leno Garage – getting the P1 video 

As you can see, It’s a 2015 GT Premium Fastback/Performance Package/50th Anniversary/401/Manual/Black on Black on Black with some black too.

Pros:
Looks awesome, drives very well, strong power and torque anytime you want it, the familiar Mustang “locomotive” straight line feeling, but this time with very good handling, super sweet gear, very good grip (much of it thanks for the P Zeros), surprisingly well put-together, Sync less horrible than it used to be, very good seats,

Cons:
Ride in slow speeds/city way too harsh with the performance package (much better on highways), Not as fast as the numbers would suggest, 1-3 gears with very short ratios, bigger car but still useless back row, mix of great + subpar materials inside, no sunroof option.

Bottom line:
Great car, don’t get the performance package (too harsh), don’t get the Recaro seats (manual), best value for money sports car for $40k ever, and the looks you get are priceless. Oh, and get it in black.

The official delivery of the magnificent new McLaren 570s is expected to be end of 2015, early 2016. This is if you made it to the first batch of 570s, which most interested people didn’t.

In the meantime, there are many snippets of the 570s out there, so we thought it’s only doing the 570s a proper service by embedding 5 of them here on Charlie Alpa Romeo.

We’re excited to see more videos coming up at the end of the year by those lucky ones who made it to the first batch, and in the meantime enjoy

The official commercial – comparing the 570s to a Black Swan. A theory developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, speaking about the impact of the highly improbable, an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight (from Wikipedia).

The one and only Chris Harris

Bloomberg scored to be the first journalistic organization in the world to have seen and cover the 570s

Shmee, real name Tim Burton, is a popular video blogger covering super cars around the world (here is his website as well), and here is his 570s story

The Verge published a story called “McLaren’s ‘low-end’ 570S is still impressive — and expensive”

There are many write ups already about the match not being as exciting as it could be, or was built up to be, but still it delivered the hype and excitement it was expected to. We didn’t feel we had much to add on the actual fight, here at Charlie Alpha Romeo,  so we chose to address the $200M Mayweather revealed he will net from the fight and what we believe every person should do in that situation – get a few super-cars.

Now this video we’re about to show you was published on March 2015 so granted, the passion for super-cars must have already existed for “Pretty Boy” Floyd Mayweather.

Photo credit: Bryan Horowitz

Much like anything else in life, over time – you get comfortable with what you have, and some of the excitement of the first time you drove a Turbo, or the first time you drove a stick fades away, and you need a little more excitement.

In the world of fast cars, there are few main price tiers:

– 0 – $50k – normal people’s fast/fun cars (Mazda Miata, Audi TT

– $50k to $150k – looking good, driving fast (Porsche, Corvette)

– $150k-$200k – Fast and the furious (Porsche Turbo S models, Audi R8, Mercedes AMG, ..)

But then there are 2 more absurd tiers, one is the $200k-$350k, and one after is in the $1M-$2M which is considered hyper car.

When you’re willing to spend $200k-$350k you get access to unbelievable dreamy cars, anywhere from Lamborghini Huracan, to Ferrari California or 458. The Huracan or 458 are absolutely dreamy cars, driving in the 3 seconds range to 65 miles per hour, have 500 horse powers range, and look stunning.

Up until 2015, the main cars that were “killing it” in the $200k-$350k range were Lamborghini and Ferrari with a slew of models that could fit various needs. Porsche was never really strong in the $200k-$350k as its most expensive model, the 911 Turbo S costs about $180k, and above that you can get the Porsche 918 for a $1M.

There is a big void for Porsche, nothing that’s more than a 911 and less than a 918. It’s either you spend $100k-$200k or you spend a million dollars.

As of 2015, McLaren – the company behind hyper-car P1, spotted this gap — and decided to go after it, launching a car of its own to go after the “$200k range”, named #570S.

This means that when it comes to McLaren, Lamborghini or Ferrari – they have an offering for $200k-$350k as well as $1M+ cars.

But what about Porsche? Will the famous 911 Turbo S become absolute and only relevant for Porsche fanatics? Will Porsche ever launch a car that’s more desirable than the 911 but less expensive than the 918?

The benefit of entering the $200k-$350k for Porsche is that it gives people a dream, they start with a Boxster, and they graduate over time to more expensive models. As of now, that dream is capped when it comes to Porsche, and McLaren is going after it with all powers. Even at the risk of cannibalizing its own 650S model.

I’ll finish by advising Porsche what the Brit tell all folks who take the Tube – “Mind The Gap”

Photo credit: Flickr

Enjoy.