The McLaren 600LT Spider: A lighter, more focused track supercar

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Although we make every effort to cover our own travel costs, in this case McLaren flew us to Phoenix to drive the 600LT (and the 720S Spider; more on that next week) and provided two nights in a hotel.

I’ll admit it: I wasn’t sure if I was going to like the McLaren 600LT Spider. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the McLaren 570S, the car it’s based on—unlike almost everyone else who’s driven one, I’d pick an Audi R8 as my daily drivable mid-engined supercar. While the 570S made concessions to practicality, I never gelled with the way it looks, and it had enough electronic foibles that they became one of my overriding memories of my time with the car. But the 600LT makes many fewer compromises in the name of everyday use, and it’s all the better for it.

Veteran McLaren watchers will know from just the name that there’s something special about this one: in McLaren-speak, LT means “long tail.” The first long-tail McLarens—ten F1 GTR race cars and three F1 GT road cars—appeared in 1997, with new bodywork that extended the nose and tail to increase downforce at speed.