The McLaren 600 LT Is The Bogeyman For Supercars

Imagine climbing out of a carbon tub where, just a few minutes ago, your body was strapped, with a rock-climbing harness, to the hardest chair in the world, your lungs gasping for air as your face melted into ‘Thanos’ driven puddles of ash. While your eyes had bulged gratuitously out of its holes and with your normally quick brain seems unable to lift your feet off the pedal, you had watched yourself being trussed like a turkey into an alternate dimension, warped into Stephen Hawking styled black holes. After an intense peeing-your-socks-off session, your nervous system finally erupted, lifting your leaden foot and pressed down hard on the brake pedal.  As you collapsed out of this marvellous "insert preferred colour" beast, the sudden smell of burnt tarmac snapped your eyes back into its sockets only to fleetingly gaze some engineers giving you a haughty look, slightly smirking at the sorry state you were in. But you didn’t care.

As you got up, butt-clenching, teeth chattering, you didn’t give two dimes that you are legs were probably not in the right place. You looked at the badge your mind instantly registering a primal state of fear, hopelessly pleading with you to get up and walk away. But your heart speaks first, asking "How much for this?" And "this" ladies and gentleman is McLaren’s spanking hot war machine, the new 600 LT.

The LT(standing for Long Tail) is McLaren’s third foray into...Uh...the LT range. After 675 LT Coupe and its complimentary Spider edition, the 600 was launched as a massive showcase of intent to better its rabid competition.

 Ferrari have their Pista model, Lamborghini have their Huracan Performante, and now McLaren have their 600 LT, a car for people who don’t want to hypercar money (although an assortment of options do make it dizzying expensive) but want an intense machine to flatten a few faces at the races. If there is one way to improve your contribution to global warming this is it. It can probably smoke its tires faster than any standard supercar, beat the crap out of some doughboys in GTR’s, purr its way to Harrods as well bring a Marina-Trench sized looks of envy on the face of the general public.

It's not just a 570 S with generously lathered carbon fibre wings. It can do 0-60 mph in 2.9 s, 0-124 mph in 8.2 s and since its an LT it is longer and wider than a standard 570. While slower than a Pista from 0-124 mph, most owners probably have enough money to own the Pista already and the significance of 0.6 s is not as big as it looks on paper. And that’s okay. Most owners with that much cash are not sticklers for specs, instead focusing on how the car looks, sounds and behaves on the road.

And oh my, it sounds hellish. Remember the Porsche 918 with vertical exhaust pipes? Yeah, this Mc has those. So with your ears closer to the barraging symphony don’t expect to take any calls while driving, unless you want the other person to hear you intensely swear or get their own equivalent of ear p*rn.

McLaren has always followed the pathos of simplicity. I mean how else do you save 100 kg of an already fast car? The interior is well anointed and if you opt for the racing seats expect cramps, but that’s okay because you are going to undergo sheer driving pleasure. While the Pista might have rave reviews, it has more buttons on its steering wheel than a graphing calculator! While the Mc will let you focus on the road the Pista would want you to focus on the steering as well, which in my opinion isn’t right. Some people love the button look, but in the end, it’s a matter of perspective.

 

With weight down, the handling would no doubt be significantly sharper which you would probably want to exercise unless you fancy running over your neighbour's driveway and run over his prized petunia's. And don't forget the big wing for with a permanent spoiler at the back, downforce and stickiness to the road is enhanced, making sure you don’t take-off -
F15- style in an absolutely bonkers car.

McLaren has again worked their magic here. And this carbon hot wheels will no doubt sell like hot chocolate on a bizarrely cold day. However, there is an inherent disadvantage in the fact the 600 LT would probably affect sales of models like the 720S. But McLaren have many smart heads with business acumen so obviously they know what they are doing, unlike me who is busy drooling over the LT’s configurator. And with an LT edition of the 720 coming up, McLaren sure are hitting the right strides with their new models.

 Soooooo…want to buy one? Then you better be quick because there is only a 12-month production run annnnnnnd it's almost sold out.