Why I hate McLaren

We want thread titles to accurately represent the content of the thread, so that other users can determine if the topic interests them and if they want to peruse/participate. Usually the first post represents the intent, but you indicated that the first post had "nothing to do with it", which is a failure on your part in setting the thread theme. Even "McLaren criticism" fails to accurately represent the thread since it could indicate any number of things, such as a poor service experience, poor dealer experience, dislike of the company, dislike of the marque, dislike of a model, dislike of your specific example, etc, etc. The best I can get after skimming the thread is that you want to use this thread to bash on McLaren based on whatever the latest news from them or thought you have against McLaren. Hence the title.

 

At the moment you decided this was an appropriate title for a thread on FerrariChat you should have realize FerrariChat should not have threads like this and deleted it. You also should have considered temporarily suspending Igor to teach him a lesson on decorum. In your response to this thread you gave him the kind of polite consideration he doesn’t seem willing to give the rest of your membership.

This is not the kind of FerrariChat I want to be a member of and I’m sure several people feel the same way. This does not reflect well on us Ferrari owners that our forum feels like a place where courtesy and politeness fall by the wayside and people can dump on other brands and drag us all down into the muck.

 

Take a step back and realize OP is talking about a brand. Big deal. This does not reflect on anyone else other than OP. Some people will think he is childish, some people will agree, most will not care.

 

Just read his posts. He’s toxic.

 

Hate is a very strong word that should be used carefully so when I see it in this somewhat light subject I don't take it seriously. I wouldn't put more effort into replying to it imo.

 

I don't know when this photo was taken, but it was posted 6 days ago. Any idea if this MP4/4 is still on display at McLaren of Chicago? It's chassis #2, which is the very car Senna clinched the 1988 championship with in Japan.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEXYIespifm/

 

Some impressions and observations. People who buy a particular car for what is a lot of money to then be it. A Vette maclaren ferari etc tend to be defensive and fixate on what’s good.

criticism is taken As something g akin to critics of ones children. But these are cars mere mechanical objects and one can easily admit to their faults without negatiing their positives. All cars have faults.

Modern maclaren would not exist but for the seminal f1 and the fact that Ferrari is areogant In extremists and treats customers as such. Ferrari left the door wide open for a competitor in a market they owned.

besides arguably Lamborghini maclaren is the only real Ferrari competitor.

from my experience mp12 570s and 579 gt4
Maclrwns are cool conceptually but have a ways to go. Objectively they’re there but subjectively the cars miss. The v8 sounds like a bucket of bolts or with sports exhaust a blare. It’s not particularly responsive either, but it does put out the power.

All exotics are ridiculous and pointless, they’re pointless overkill for the road and there are far better options for track. What an exotic should offer is looks spec (maclaren has these) and evocative motors (maclaren does not) plus a whole host of subjective factors from Steering feel to the rest. Maclaren Steering is Pretty excellent. Still maclaren is no Ferrari. Maclaren is still
IMO a really upscale Vette.

they’re exotic they’re nice thyre fun, really “fast”
but not quite compelling,
Particularly because of the motor.

I wish them well not
Least because Ferrari needs someone to keep them on their toes.

I like cars that can work on track I mean really work, and cars that are also fun at roadable speeds, alas that’s not maclaren.
The two companies who have that covered are Ferrari and porche.

the cf tub suspension and steering are great
They need to work on the rest. Just my 02c

 

well there are 3 choices in this exact segmentferrarinmackrwnnand Lamborghini.

lambo hurricanes are really cool but eyre also glorified Audi’s with an god chain rep. ferrari you’d have to have little self respect to kowtow to their dealers so maclaren has its place.

mid say drive a f8 hurricane and 720 and choose based o which one drives best for you in the way and places you drive.

 

Maclrens are defintely not the fastest on track Those are magazine one lap wonders. Consistently fastest means running 15 laps 5x per day and day after day,that would be a Gt3.
A maclaren cost 6k to run on track for a day, so I hear from owners.

Astons just look and sound nice, theyre not a serious car for track in any way, theyre way down the track totem pole compared to a Macklren.. Hybrids are heavy for track, a stunt car to lap nurbering fast for a lap, k but thats it.

Go to nay track and see what people run. Heavily moded E36 BMWs, moded caymans some new Gt3s, lotus and vettes. To run on track you need a car that is durable enough to last, and light enough that consumables(tires and brakes) last. Unless youre a billionaire 6k perday to run on track is ridiculous and I hear the maclrens are not durable anyway..

A Miata is $500 per day, and a Gt3 approaching 3K the others fall in between.

Maclarens are really cool road exotics that push boudaries, their performance(besides accleration bursts) is a bench numbers game for owners as with other exotics. Cool machines I love that they exist, no one seriously tracks a maclaren even those that can afford it.

I did drive a 570Gt4 for 10 laps and it was quick, but not compelling, thats a whole other debate..

 

If you could spell and made some sense maybe we could follow your post but your writing style is inline with your opinion on cars. I would also say that if you've owned any of the cars you speak about you might be taken more seriously until then it is a poor attempt of making any point.

For the rest of us who are actually in the game vs. the sidelines McLaren is an incredible brand with incredible cars. Having likely owned more Ferraris than Igor and Boxerman combined I still feel this way and cant wait for my 765LT to arrive. If you have lived with any of these cars you see where they are good, bad or where they can be better. This type of criticism is fair. What we are seeing in this thread are people who hate with no firsthand experience just butt hurt that something else is pushing their favorite brand. Meaningless dribble....

 

You really have not idea what you are posting. I have had 2 991,2 GT3's and while I love them for what they are they will never touch the track version of a McLaren i.e 600 LT or 600R. The Porsche are solid and bullet proof but lack the power to keep up. If they are all fitted with the same tires its no comparison. This is coming from an owner of all these cars not an opinion from some clown I met at a C&C. Of course on the interweb everyone is an expert although they have no experience. There are costs to tracking any car - brakes, tires and some other things than can occasionally need replacement or repair, this is the case for all of these cars. The more expensive the car, the more these things cost. Its all relative.

 

No need to be insulting, its not your first born I am talking about is it?

True unlike you I am not a multiple serial new car owner. I bond with what I have. Have had the same 1 ferrari for 27 years now. 2 lotus and various BMW, Those are the cars I keep, have been through a few others along the way that were not worth keeping simply because they didnt fill a niche as well as somehting I already had..

As to driving have driven most of them more on track than street. People like me to test their cars on track and give an opinion probably because I'm faster than them in what they considder lesser cars and take my driving art seriously. I dont need to convince my drivign chops those that know me know.

Mostly I do my speed driving on track. Although for backroads a lotus elise is impossible to beat. Horses for courses and it depends where you live and what roads you have acess to.

People own cars for many reasons, supercars are really just not that serious when you're talking track prowess, theyre awesome fun if you have the roads for them, which these days is the middle east, south africa or argentina.. That is probably not the USA although I hear Texas hill country is good.

For track most supercars including maclrens are really limited, we can say that about most road legal cars, but some take to the track better than others and some are more easily altered to work on track. I guess for the weekend thrill rider a Macalren or ferrari works, you know for the owner who loves blasting down the straight and then inevitably overbraking for the corners. .

I aven tried a 600lt but can speak to the 570 Gt4 which is supposedly track honed, its frankly not in the same ballpark as a track porche or ferrariGT4. The few I know who tried to make them work in race series gave up for good reason.

So yes for a 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile drag a 720 is quicker than the others. Its roll on acceleration is epic. Thats not a criteria I find relevant for track use.

On road Ferraris just tend to be more of an all round epic experience. Thats due to motor sound and other subtle and subjective factors. All of the supercars are overpowered and rely on electronics to keep their wealthy owners shiney side up. So any paper difference in performance is to me moot.
The diffrerence between a track and road car is stark. Chris Harris is way faster around a track in his 570GT4 than a Senna and the Hp difference is yuge. Hp is not what makes you fast on track, especialy if electronics are needed to dial it all back so its driveable

They're all great for what they are, but lets not kid ourselvs theyre primarily road cars and designed to impress the less skilled on road with electronicaly stabilized hp thirlls. Are maclrens better or worse than ferrais, In the context of a road car thats just all individual choice.

I like the CF tub and that the driver is centered towards the middle of the car. the 570Gt4 had the best most precise steering of any modern I have driven. the electronics made it uncrashable unless you went into a corner too fast, so the car is doing most of it for you if thats your thing. With the turbo motor you cant ballance the car on throttle but thats true of all turbo cars and maybe it doesent matter because you can just plant the pedal off the apex and the electronics sorts it out.

Hey we live in a world where a modern Bugatti is a 3 million dollar car and I think its a totaly useless car but an amazing human acomplishment.

Maclren have done well to almost knock ferrari off their pedestal, no on else except lambo got close and thats audi.

Too bad Maclren is going for paper numbers and not making something really epic like the T50 which is the true sucessor to the F1.
Maclren are no worse or better than a modern ferrari, sadly theyre all kinda pointless other than for a few quick thrills and posing, and frankly for that its hard to beat an aventador.

the holy grail to me is a car like a 250swb or the F1, a car totaly engaging to drive, fun at all speed and acomplished on track. Thats not a modern Maclren.

I drive with a few billionaires so they have no budget limit, the don't track their Maclrens because its just an obscene cost for what it is. But then they dont track their road ferraris either for the same reason.

If Maclren were making somneting like the T50 I'd take them far more seriously, the same criticism to a lesser degree can be leveled at ferrari.
As I said Malcrens are really cool for what they are.

I see you have a pista, thats my favorite modern road car, pista or 720 thats a choice theyre both cool, but they are what they are. On track I'd much rather driver a slower F40, but thats me..

 

Yeap... more dribble on a car forum from people who don't own the cars... Pretty soon people won't be able to tell car forums from the comment section on youtube videos (We are probably already there).


it seems to be a pattern; strong opinions without any direct and significant experience on the subject matter.

 

Man, you are all over the place! And for god's sake!!! It's spelled McLaren !!!!

and I don't know if Chris Harris ever compared a Senna to a 570GT4. Are you thinking of the 650S GT3 maybe? Do you proof read your comment before you hit the post button?
If you told me you just finished a 6 pack of Bud, that would explain a lot. It's a holiday, so, I understand.


.

 

I am not insulting but I am honestly having a hard time following your posts. Aside from the spelling and grammatical errors I still dont get your point. Are you saying that you dont like any of the newer cars and you prefer older tech? If so, that is certainly your prerogative. Yes, us owners know that these cars are expensive to track, some dont care and others drive track cars for that reason. Porsche is certainly a great option.

 

Ok let me try spell better and organize my thoughts for more coherence.

While some may hate Maclaren I don't. I think its great they exist and that Ferrari has real competition in this space. In fact the way ferrari treated customers is directly related to why modern Macalren now exists. I love that mackalren lacks the ferrari name cachet snob appeal, although thats changing with volume.
While some may argue Lamborghini is a competitor modern lambo's (except the aventador) are not really bespoke cars. Ferris and Maclarens are bespoke in that all the major mechanical and chassis pieces in them are unique to that brand and product.

The cred and provenance that Maclaren came to the market with was the F1 and racing sucess, the father of that sucess/cachet was Gordon Murrey, I love his philosophy on cars and its a great disapointment to me that the modern Maclarens have not followed that path. Its what I was expecting.

Whatever they produce now does not harken back to the F1 unless you count the tenuous link through a Cf tub. The F1 was in every sense viceral drivers car. Modern Maclarens are certainly acomplished in terms of comparative performance numbers but they have strayed far when it comes to being drivers cars, thats true of ferrari too, but to a lesser degree as ferraris still are better motor wise and have 76 years of cachet.. To Whit Murray(the father of the Maclredn road car and its most famous race designer) would never have designed or produced what Maclren now makes.

Yes they need sales and that means making an easy to drive car that can work in regular traffic requiring no more from the driver than any other car. Yes they make a car that on paper is "quicker" than anything else in that price range. But they also imo miss a lot. The motor really does sound and feel like a bucket of bolts, and at this level the motor should be a soprano and smooth fast rever. Yes they put out the power but so does a Zr1 vette.

The modern Maclarens cars were developed by F1 engineers, they were obsessed as race engineers are with the objective numbers, as such they missed a lot of the things that make supercars viceraly appealing. Imo Maclarens have great steering, and brake feel is superlative, but the rest is competant.

To me a Maclren is like a really upscale vette, it punches way above its weight numbers wise, but its simply not all there not all of a piece.
Then there are build question marks, the one Senna i have seen on track had bits of the dash falling off. As to track ability, when the Mp12 came out, part of the sales line was that all the consumables would be relatively inexpensive because they really wanted people to use their cars especialy on track. We're now at a point where to keep your warrantly the car has to go to the dealer to go on track all for 6k. No one else does or requires this.

I love that Maclarten is leading the charge to lighter weight, as weight is anathema to me and for the $$$ the cars should be light, but imo they simply have a lot more to do.

Murray is now building his T50 which imo is the type of cart I would have expected from maclaren. Its clever, light, has a super responsive engine and is designed all around driving pleasure as a priority, not just raw numbers/speed. Yes its going to cost $3million, but a mass produced version would naturaly cost less, and a production car could build in some compromise to cost less still.

Yes i lament the modern car trend of adding 7 or 8 rapid shift paddle gears and lots of hp and tires (managed under the electronics umbrella) all to show a few quick laps and some zooty numbers. Personaly I don't find such machines as pleasurable to drive as they could be.

While porche is a rung lower on the numbers scale, the Gt3 while not light has a simply awesome motor and it has a lithe edgy feeling. Imagine what Maclren could do at its price range.

The proof as they say is in the pudding. The Maclrens depreciate fast because they simply are just a new shiney thing superceeded by the next model thats slightly faster, as with vettes. Maclrens are awesome toys, but they're not seminal cars, and I expected more from the company, at least in one model. The F1 was their seminal car, and for under $1million 30 years of production tech means they could be offering something that lights the fire at all speeds as that one did, thats their usp. What we have now are Ron Dennis cars, I was expecting/hoping for a Murray car.

Just my own opinion and perspective. I wish them well, they just have a ways to go imo..

 

^I honestly can't tell if you're trying to mess with all of us after reading only the first paragraph. You misspelled McLaren three different ways there (Maclaren, Macalren, and mackalren). Even later on you have a fourth and fifth way with "Maclredn" and "Maclren." Is this for real?

Edit: Found a sixth way "Maclarten."