I walked out of the airport in Malaga, Spain, to 65 degrees and sunshine. The kind of weather you expect in March on the Mediterranean Costa Del Sol. The history of this city dates back to 770 BCE, with architectural ruins showing signs of past tenants of the craggy, torn coastline overlooking the Rock of Gibraltar. Malaga will witness more history over the next few weeks as legendary Formula 1 constructor McLaren lets lucky members of the press behind the wheel of some possibly unlucky 650S supercars. After a typical two-hour-long Spanish dinner with my hosts, I retired to the sound of birds and wind rustling in trees outside my window.
The following day I awoke to what I thought was the sound of a broken sprinkler, a familiar sound to my Southern California ears. In fact it was rain pouring down from what had been, just a few short hours ago, beautiful blue sky. My head swirled with thoughts of driving on twisting canyon roads on the way to a world-class racetrack in an unfamiliar, 641-hp, rear-wheel-drive supercar. My conscious mind wrangled the subconscious clouds of information peppered with visualizations and corralled them together into one coherent thought: Fudge! Or something very close to that.
Much of the chatter surrounding the new 650S has focused on the car's name. This is essentially an evolution of the 12C, benefitting from the knowledge gained building the P1 hypercar. The interweb "expert" community questions McLaren's decision to name the car 650S when it is merely an upgraded 12C.
But any company capable of building a verifiable supercar, based on knowledge gained from its hypercar program, is entitled to name it whatever it damn well pleases. If McLaren had named it Susan, I would be fine with that. Obviously, the 650 comes from the engines 650 PS, or Pferdestärke, which is the European standard for horsepower. As of 2005, the U.S. has used SAE horsepower, which explains why we say the 650S has 641 hp. The S is short for Sport, perhaps better used to demonstrate the English tendency of understatement more than describing the car.
The 650S uses most of the same components as the 12C. The carbon tub with aluminum subframes at both ends is used again, as well as being shared with the P1. The tub weighs at a scant 165 pounds and is built by Carbo Tech, an aerospace contractor in Austria. Most lower-volume carbon-fiber supercars are built using pre-impregnated fiber composites and then baked in an autoclave. With an eventual goal of building 4000 cars per year, pre-preg was deemed too labor- and time-intensive, so the McLaren tub is built using a resin transfer molding process. The tooling also uses internal, removable mandrels for the hollow sections, allowing it to be built in one piece. While the precut carbon sheets are being placed in the tooling, aluminum components are also positioned, so the subframes can be bolted on later. Some of you are undoubtedly asking, "But what about the galvanic corrosion between the carbon and aluminum?" I knew we had smart readers. Don't worry; the aluminum is primed before assembly. The wide and deep hollow box sections on each side of the tub are a large part of why the McLaren is so freakishly stiff. They are also the biggest reason the McLaren requires freakish abilities to enter and exit without looking like a drunken Cirque Du Soleil performer.
First Drive: 2015 McLaren 650S
Reviewed by BlogCarShow
Published :
Rating : 4.5
Published :
Rating : 4.5
