A supercar could stretch its legs in the desert, or so we thought. Far away from prying eyes and prying radar guns. Here, maybe, we could get at the heart of what McLaren’s most hardcore supercar – the most hardcore supercar? – is all about.
It was a half-baked idea at best. We’d meet the car – a McLaren 675LT – outside of Los Angeles, drive over the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountains, into the Palm Desert, and then south toward the Salton Sea and its looming toxic dust storms that will surely usher in the apocalypse.
The Colorado River flooded in 1905, and the water ended up between Mexicali and Palm Springs. An accident created the Salton Sea, the biggest lake in California.
In the 1950s, a developer named M. Penn Phillips tried to turn it into the American Riviera, according to the Los Angeles Times. In one weekend, he sold $4.25-million (U.S.) worth of real estate along the lakeshore. There was a mid-century modern yacht club and shops and a whole grid of streets. It must have felt like an oasis. Frank Sinatra used to visit – until the lake turned unusable from farm runoff and salt. Fish died. Birds died. I guess the smell arrived then, too.
In photos: McLaren's most hardcore supercar - the 675LT
Our story starts at a parking lot in Corona, a place that as far as a tourist can tell, is a city-sized strip mall. Never has anywhere had such bountiful parking or such variety of outlet retail options. The deal goes down outside a Starbucks with exceptionally chipper baristas.
The McLaren 675LT is unobtainium, one of 500 examples, all of which are sold, including the neon green one on loan to us.
This searing green car drives slowly into view, its roof well below the level of the takeout window, its surfboard-sized front splitter skimming the ground. Downforce seems like a dumb concept in a place where cars don’t go above 10 kilometres an hour. Among the rows of old Sonatas and crossovers, the McLaren is a fish out of water – a fish out of this world. A space fish.
After signing some papers, the nearly $500,000 car is our responsibility. The feeling isn’t so much excitement, but the overprotectiveness of a new parent.
Route talk is big in California. You have to take the 405 or the 110 to the 10 but, for the love of God, stay off the 15 or vice versa. We end up on the 215 south past an air force base and turn east on the 74 to Hemet.
We’re only allowed to put 300 miles on the McLaren – that was the deal we cut to borrow the car – and our journey to the Salton Sea and open roads will use all of them. No wrong turns then.
On the way, at a gas station in Woodcrest, a man leans out his car window and yells, “What is that?” A McLaren 675LT. “A what?” McLaren. It’s from England. “How much?” It’s not mine.
A gas station employee takes photos. He wants to know all the specs: 666 horsepower; 0-200 km/h in 7.9 seconds, or 124 mph in local currency. It’s nearly as quick as a Bugatti Veyron and, for all practical purposes, as fast as cars get in 2015.
Moving toward the desert through the farthest L.A. commuter enclaves, the scenery gets emptier and the cars get beat and faded. There’s less variety of retail options.
For all its visual drama, the LT is fine trundling along with traffic. Ultralight alloy wheels and low-profile tires don’t normally mix this well with neglected pavement. It could be comfortable, except for the edges of the carbon bucket seat digging into my bones. We’re still not alone, not far enough away from civilization. The LT is doing admirably, but it’s far from its element.
LT stands for Longtail. It’s meant as a loose homage to McLaren’s F1 GTR “Longtail” that won its class at the 1997 24-Hours of Le Mans, but the new LT’s not all that long. It is, however, 100 kilograms lighter than the McLaren 650S because McLaren jettisoned everything not absolutely necessary to making a car go fast: deleting the air-conditioning saved 11 kilograms, shaving a millimetre off the windscreen saves three kilograms, carbon-fibre body panels saved 35. Press on the plastic sheet that covers the 3.8-litre twin-turbo V-8 and it buckles like a Dasani bottle. It’s a supercar, minus the glamour and frivolities.
The 74 becomes the Idyllwild National Forest Highway and turns twisty as it heads into the mountains. Fussing with dials is de rigueur. Press the glowing ACTIVE button, turn the powertrain dial to TRACK and handling to SPORT, switch the transmission to MANUAL.
The revs rise and fall with your foot on the throttle. The grip from the two front wheels is hard to judge because it feels endless on the road. The car is superlatively fast. All the adjectives can’t do it justice. Anyone who looked at it would know that.
The steering is quicker and heftier than on the 650S. The car responds more precisely and with more feel, probably thanks to the stiffer suspension and stiffer Pirelli Trofeo R tires. It’s McLaren’s best. I wrote that about the entry-level good-guy 570S, but the LT is more impressive.
After a dozen adrenalin-pumping corners, we’re stuck behind an ambulance. A bit on the nose, don’t you think, God?
The sun sets early behind the mountains and we’re running out of time. Salton City is a dozen miles away, but we pull off to see the Salton Sea before it’s totally dark. The smell is heavy and there’s no escaping. It’s like old fish and sulphur. At least now we’re alone with the car, but the road’s run out. It crumbled into what was once the shoreline. Toxic dust storms are the big worry now that the water’s receding.
Evidence of California’s four-year drought is visible everywhere. The California we see is less the California of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and more the home of Steinbeck.
Here is a Sandals Resort, 40 years postapocalypse. But it’s not empty enough. Not dry enough. The Longtail is a supercar stripped to the bone and better for it. It’s a thing suited to a Mad Max world, where you can burn guzzoline and never look back. In this world, it’s frustrating, tantalizing. Glamour is overrated.
The writer was a guest of the auto maker. Content was not subject to approval.
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