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McLaren 675LT Spider: 1200 miles in a day

Montana to Texas in the McLaren 675LT Spider

McLaren 675LT Spider: 1200 miles in a day

Having driven the Porsche 911 GT3 RS from Texas to Montana, it was the McLaren 675LT Spider’s turn to carry SSO Jr. (aka Bad Driver) and I on the 1573 mile journey back to Dallas. We needed to bring the McLaren back down as it was due in for its annual service and I really trust the team at McLaren Dallas.  As this was essentially the 675LT Spider’s return voyage, after a year’s vacation in the mountains, I had little concern that the car could make the trip.  The challenge this time was more on the drivers as we would be doing 1230 miles on day one as we needed to be back in Dallas by 1PM on day two.  Unlike on the recent all Porsche trip North where we took 2 cars, Bad Driver and I would be splitting the driving duties on the way South.

As Bad Driver hadn’t driven the 675LT Spider in well over a year, I did need to get him both comfortable and confident behind the wheel of the mighty Mac before we headed off.  In the days before we headed south, we took the 675LT Spider out for a few long runs in the valley to get him reacclimated and then headed up into the mountains for a bit more of a challenge. It didn’t take Bad Driver long to get comfortable and he had the McLaren flowing down the road nicely after just a few runs out.  The runs up empty mountain roads were really helpful as we worked on sightlines, braking points, and cornering.  For a young driver, he is quite smooth and keeps the car nicely balanced.  This is a far cry from his brief career in carts when I don’t think Bad Driver ever touched the left-hand pedal and he spent more times sideways than pointing forward.

The 675LT Spider was a great car for Bad Driver to be learning more “spirited” driving skills in. Visibility is excellent, and it is a very easy car to place on the road.  The controls are all simple and intuitive.  The traction control system is excellent while not being intrusive like some of the earlier systems I remember from 1990s Ferraris.  The brakes and accelerator both have great feel and are easy to modulate.   The gearbox paddles move with the steering wheel, so you never need to take your hand off the wheel to hunt for them.  It is also a car that shrinks around you as your progress increases.

The drive back down, while long, was delightfully uneventful.  We set out early on Thursday morning, and made rapid progress from Montana to the Wyoming border.  Once in wide open Wyoming, it was Bad Driver’s turn to take the wheel.  With nearly no traffic and nothing but wide-open road in front of us, we were able to pick up the pace even a bit more.  The car responded beautifully and seemed to really enjoy running at a good clip for a few hours on end.  The larger fuel tank and better gas mileage in the 675 vs. the 911 GT3 RS also allowed us to cut the number of fuel stops by half vs. the drive north.  At the Wyoming Colorado state line, we switched seats again and I got the less fun task of getting us down to and around Denver at the beginning of rush hour. With traffic slowing to a crawl about 15 miles north of Denver, we opted to take a detour which looped us out to the airport and then back south around the city.  This added about 15 extra miles but probably saved us an hour in bumper to bumper traffic.

Once free of the grip of Denver traffic, we got back on the pace down towards New Mexico.  A short stop for a driver change, dinner, and gas in Pueblo was extended by a few minutes when a SUV pulled up next to us in the gas station.  A family piled out of the SUV and the mother came running up and asked if we would mind if her son took a few pictures of the car as he was a huge McLaren fan and had never seen one up close.  We of course obliged before hitting the road again.

The final part of the day 1 drive was the most challenging.  Shortly before crossing into New Mexico, the last rays of light disappeared, and we were into a moonless night.  While the headlights on the 675LT Spider are outstanding, they do little to illuminate what might be lurking on the side of the road and there are plenty of deer in this part of the country.  Once in New Mexico, it was off the Interstate Highway, another quick stop for a driver change, and we were now on smaller roads for the final 200 miles. This was the most intense part of the drive.  Bad Driver was on deer watch duty, and I was just trying to get us to the hotel as quickly as possible and in one piece.  1230 miles later, two deer sightings on the side of the road, and after one last pit stop, we arrived in Amarillo for a short night’s rest.

The final 343 miles down US-287 in Texas were uneventfully.  It’s a combination of divided 4 & 2 lane highway in the countryside that connects a series of small towns that have plenty of speed traps hiding on the outskirts.  We did make it to Dallas by our 1PM target on day 2.  What didn’t make it were the thousand or so bugs covering the nose of the McLaren.  Over the 1573 miles, the 675LT Spider performed magnificently.  It was comfortable, exciting to drive, and a great place to send a day and a half in.  Over the course of the trip, we average 26.8 mpg at an average speed of 74mph. Not too shabby.

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Bad Driver’s Insights on 2 Porsches

Porsche 911 WC GT3 RS vs. Porsche Cayenne S - Bad Driver's Insights

Bad Driver’s Insights on 2 Porsches

By SSO Jr.  aka Bad Driver

One of the great things about getting my driver’s license in this day and age was that I never had to learn how to drive a stick shift. For the life of me, I cannot operate a clutch. This has perpetuated the idea that I’m a Bad Driver. This self-inflected nickname has thus stuck with my Dad and one of his new favorite things to call me whenever we head out in something with four wheels. In fact, if I was forced to drive a stick shift with a gun to my head, it would end rather poorly. Despite this, I am fortunate enough to have grown up surrounded by some of the greatest manual supercars. While I can’t drive these cars today, I have spent long enough in the right-hand seat to get a good feel for how I would think they would drive if I ever decided to get off the couch and learn to drive properly. So, for the purposes of this article, we will be taking a look at two of the high-powered Porsche’s my Dad keeps in his garage. One I can drive and one I can’t: the Porsche 911 (997.2) WC GT3 RS and the Porsche Cayenne S.

I’ll start with the Cayenne S because my Dad’s Cayenne S and I have a very special bond. Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of embarking on a long journey with the Cayenne S from the chopped up, crumbling concrete roads of Dallas to the beautiful mountain passes of Big Sky, Montana, while trying to keep pace with my Dad charging ahead in the GT3 RS. Having lived most of my life in Europe, I have never really comprehended how massive the US actually is, and mentally hadn’t really prepared for a 23-hour journey. Realistically speaking, you all don’t read this for the narrative so let’s get to the car.

For someone who likes having all the modern tech in a car, the Cayenne S was a completely new experience for me as it was pretty barren. While it had front and rear end parking sensors, there are no back up cameras or Bluetooth. Hence there was no way to play my music through the car and I found myself blasting it through the iPhone speakers. This truly was a nightmare for my millennial self. While these aspects of the car were pretty irritating for someone such as myself, I must say that the car was an engineering marvel. No car that big or heavy should move and handle the way that it does. While it may not have a turbo like the one we owned back in the UK, there’s no shortage of power. Despite being a much less experienced driver than my dad, I was able to keep pace with him on the highways. Even at somewhat high speeds, the car handled beautifully through the corners, and more than compensated for anything I was doing wrong, keeping me right behind my Dad. In fact, it helped me keep pace until the last 50 miles when we hit the mountain passes. I was actually on his tail until he scooted around a truck in a passing window that was going to be far too tight for the Cayenne S. After this, the GT3 RS just disappeared up the road. While I may have thought it was going to be a nightmare to drive the 1600 mile trip, the Cayenne S thoroughly impressed me in every area you would care about, despite falling short of my millennial technological desires.

I also have a special relationship with the GT3 RS, but not in the same way. The GT3 RS is the car that every time I get into it, I get teased about not being able to drive a manual. I honestly think Dad is disappointed I can’t drive the car yet. The bit of guilt has led to a bit of a love/hate relationship with GT3 RS. From the many hours I have spent in it, I have gotten a unique perspective for how it drives simply by feeling how it moves on the road. While my Dad probably wouldn’t want me to say this, I’ve found that is has a very precise gearbox. I know this because I have seen him stall the car at a traffic light and watched him grab 6th gear when I know he was looking for 4th as we went up a mountain. Despite that, it does drive very smoothly and handles wonderfully around corners. When pushed hard, you do feel the back end moving a bit and I do think you could lose it if you took a corner a bit too quickly. It is a very raw, powerful car and is likely one of the closer things I will ever see to a race car that is road legal.

I may not be the best driver yet, but years of being around great cars has shown me what good, enjoyable driving is, and more specifically, what makes a car great. Both of these Porsches are very good cars, in fact I would call the GT3 RS potentially a great car. Each serves a very different purpose. Whether you’re looking for a solid every day car that moves like a sports car, or an almost affordable sports car to track or enjoy on the weekends, you cannot go wrong with either of these Porsche. Next summer my goal is to finally learn how to master a clutch so I can drive the GT3 RS myself.

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Porsche 911 GT3 RS: 2 Days and 1600 miles

2 Days, 1600 miles, and a few Mountains in the Porsche 911 GT3 RS

Porsche 911 GT3 RS: 2 Days and 1600 miles

In what is fast becoming a summer ritual, my youngest son (aka – Bad Driver) and I drove a pair of cars from Texas up to their new home in Montana. This year I drove the Porsche 911 (997.2) GT3 RS up while Bad Driver followed in the Porsche Cayenne S. In effect, these are the two extremes of the Porsche line up. The quick agile truck and the raw focused track weapon. Despite having owned the Cayenne S for 3 ½ and the GT3 RS for a year and a half, this was the first major long distant trip for both. While I had no concerns on how Bad Driver would hold up for 1600 miles in the Cayenne, I was concerned with the beating I might be setting myself up for in the striped down GT3 RS. Little to no sound deadening, thinly padded racing buckets, and a suspension designed more for the Nurburgring Ring than the US Interstate Highway system is not a recipe for setting a new standard of comfort.

The trip started at 7:00 AM on Thursday morning. The targeted destination for day 1 was just north of Denver, a not insignificant 920 miles away. A further 680 miles would follow on day 2. This year we decided to take the longer way up through Oklahoma and then across via Kansas which would keep us on highways for almost the entire trip. This routing avoided the back roads and small towns in Texas & Colorado which slowed our progress considerably last year. We were hoping the early-ish start would allow us to clear the city before rush hour reached its peak and break out onto the open highway where more rapid progress could be made. Other than one minor accident related traffic jam, the plan worked well and we found ourselves crossing the Oklahoma border in good time. Our first, of what would be many, fuel stops came shortly afterwards. While the Cayenne sported a range of 450+ miles, getting 200 miles out of the GT3 RS’s water bottle size tank was about the best we could do. By the time we stopped for the night, we had toured five gas station forecourts across three states with a further four stops following on day 2. On the plus side, it did give me the chance to get out of the GT3 RS about every 2 ½ hours to stretch my legs.

As a long-distance tourer, the GT3 RS is survivable. The seats and driving position are quite comfortable, the controls all well-arranged and intuitive, and the sightlines are excellent. The lack of sound-deadening coupled with the very firm suspension do cause a fair amount of brain and body damage when exposed to for extended periods. While the sounds system is not to bad when stationary, once you get moving a speed it has plenty of competition from the rear of the car. Passing is almost too easy, drop down 2 gears, a bit of right foot and what was in front will now be firmly in the rearview mirror. Below 3000 rpms engine grunt is pretty ordinary, north of 4500 rpms the GT3 RS comes very much alive. This is a car that wants to be pushed hard and really driven. Cruising is just not its thing.

While day one was basically an uninspiring slog on dead straight concrete highways across the flatlands, day two was significantly more interesting. Once we crossed into Wyoming, the speed limit increased to 80 mph and the quality of the roads improved dramatically. While it doesn’t have quite the fun factor of a mountain pass, the 350 miles up through Wyoming are about as good as it gets on a US Interstate. There is little to no traffic, the road is painted across the hills, and you have the Rocky Mountains to your west. If there ever was a stretch of highway in the US that an autobahn approach to speed limits should be applied to, it is this. Needless to say, we made rapid progress and the GT3 RS started to really come into its own. Crossing into Montana, the roads got even more interesting as the hills grew in size. For the first time in 1220 miles, the gearbox started to get more of a work out as we powered up the hills and then down through fairly tight corners. After another rapidly covered another 250 miles, we were finally off the highway and headed up into the mountains. The final 50 miles were on what is becoming one of my favorite pieces of tarmac in the US. The two lanes of Route 191 are cut alongside the Gallatin River as it winds through a narrow valley with towering peaks on both sides. It is challenging, beautiful, and unforgiving if you get it wrong. As one of the key access routes to Yellowstone National Park, it also gets a fair amount of traffic which needs to be navigated in passing zones that are few and far between.

While on the highway, the Cayenne S had little trouble keeping pace with the GT3 RS, however I lost “Bad Driver” almost immediately as soon as we headed into the mountains. This was not unexpected as his last words to me at our final gas station stop were “I will see you at the house”. Here the GT3 RS was completely in its element, the brain and body damage of 1200 miles on the highway were washed away and quickly forgotten. The more you push it, the better the GT3 RS gets. Hands and feet were plenty busy working the gearbox, navigating the corners, and dispatching slower moving traffic. As my daily driver is a mid-engined car, the difference in weight distribution on the GT3 RS was quite discernable. The fact that the engine is hanging off the rear axle is definitely noticeable, as is the more pronounced weight transfer when you mash the middle pedal. If you want to keep the horizon in front of you, corners are definitely slow in, fast out.

After 1600 miles and twice that in dead bugs, we arrived at our destination. Over the course of two days, I finally really bonded with the GT3 RS. In the last several hundred miles, I really started understanding the depths of its abilities. Subsequent drives up through the mountains in the days that followed further deepened my appreciation of what Porsche created with the GT3 RS. It’s a car that is now up in an environment where it can really shine. We are looking forward to more great drives when we go back up in the Fall.

August 2018

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McLaren 675LT Spider in Montana

Montana & the McLaren 675LT Spider

McLaren 675LT Spider in Montana

The McLaren 675LT Spider has been living up in the mountains of Montana for the past year and a bit. This has had both positive and negative implications for the car. When the weather is good, and the roads are free of snow, I can think of no car I would rather be driving on a windy mountain road. On these type of days, the 675LT Spider sees plenty of road time, and I will come up with all sorts of excuses on why I need to take it out. The challenge is the other 7 1/2 months of cold fluffy white stuff that covers everything and makes driving anything a lot more challenging. During this period, the poor 675LT Spider just has to sit patiently and wait for the temperatures to warm. I hate letting cars sit so I have even looked into fitting the 675LT Spider with snow tires, but none come in the right sizes. I also don’t believe McLaren ever intended the 675LT to be driven in snow as it does not come with a “Winter” mode as per the 650S.

The good news is the roads are now clear and the mighty McLaren has gotten plenty of exercise in the past few days. We have several different routes mapped out depending on if we are looking for a longer or shorter run. All the routes wind through the mountains with rarely more than a few hundred yards of straight tarmac between the corners. Personally, these are the types of roads I enjoy the most and they help highlight the exceptional capabilities of the 675LT Spider. Right foot, fingertips, and arms are all constantly in motion as driver, car, and asphalt are all in constant engagement as the geography serves up constant challenges. Wildlife adds in an additional level of complexity and you always need to be on the watch out for everything from deer to moose to big horn sheep and just about everything else in between. We have even taken the McLaren down to Yellowstone for a picnic.

The 675LT Spider feels like it was designed just for these types of drives. It excels at the constant changes of direction, rapid acceleration, hard braking, and quick gear changes. The steering is perfectly weighted and incredibly precise. This allows you to put the car exactly where you want it. The 675LT neither under nor oversteers and the back-end stays glued to the road. On public roads I normally leave the handling in “normal” as I want the maximum amount of “nannying” as the snow leaves plenty of loose gravel on the roads when it melts but the transmission alternates between “sport” and “track” as I prefer the quicker shift times. While the large carbon-ceramic brakes are outstanding, so is the engine braking and in many cases a couple of pulls of the left-hand paddle is more than effective enough in scrubbing off speed going into the next corner. Opening the roof just increases the enjoyment of the whole experience. Six hundred and sixty-six horsepower make passing almost too easy. Threading the 675LT Spider through a line of slower moving traffic heading up the mountain has turned into a bit of a sport.

We spec’d our car with the electric, heated seats and electric steering column which I am now glad I did. It makes getting in and out of the car easier and the touring seats are more comfortable for long drives. I also had the car fitted with the normal Pirelli P-Zero Corsa tires vs. the Trofeo R as it sees much more road than track use. While the Trofeo’s are great in the dry, rain is not their friend and storms can come up quickly here. The other must have option is the front nose lift for both speed bumps and potholes. I can’t think of a drive where we didn’t need to use it at least once.

The plan going forward is to keep the 675LT Spider up in Montana for the remainder of the summer and then bring it back down south for all well-earned service in the fall. It will be joined up here shortly by the Porsche 911 GT3 RS. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the two cars compare on some of my favorite roads. If the weather cooperates, we will be taking both across the Beartooth Highway (which is easily one of the top ten roads in the US) and possibly the highly challenging but stunning Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park August. All this summer road time should make up for the long winter hibernation the 675LT Spider had to endure.

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