The McLaren 570S: Entry-level means compromises even for legendary automakers

We review the McLaren 570S. Video shot and edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

Few car companies have quite the same cachet as McLaren Automotive (just ask Apple). Some of that stems from the halos of the mighty McLaren F1, still in effect almost two decades after it ceased production, and the P1 hybrid hypercar. But the total number of those models in existence is still under 500. For the past few years, the company's bread and butter—if one can refer to handmade carbon fiber supercars as such—has been the Super Series. First we got the MP4-12C (which quickly dropped the MP4- bit), then the 650S and 675LT.

The 650S impressed us more than almost any other car we drove in 2015, but McLaren wants to sell between 4,000 and 5,000 cars a year by 2022. That's hard to do when vehicles cost $300,000 a pop. Enter the Sports Series, AKA the 570S. This, you see, is the entry-level McLaren—but entry level in this case means the base price starts at $184,900. It's built in the same space-age fantasy production center in Woking, UK, as the rest of the McLaren range, and the 570S shares much of the same core technology.