Have McLaren Finally Fixed Their Issues?

[Music] hmm it got me stolen now i'm all about second chances and i kind of feel like mclaren deserve a second chance because over the last few years really ever since i sold my mclaren 540c i've become increasingly negative about the brand so much so that last year tony and i did a mclaren special episode on our podcast behind the glass talking all about the issues that we've both kind of experienced with mclaren cars and in the build up to that episode and really ever since i kind of realized that a lot of those issues for me are born out of frustration i want to love these cars i want to love the mclaren brand in fact i think i still do love the mclaren brand but it's let me down so many times my own 540 was kind of played with electronic issues and then when i came to sell it it lost a ton of money in a relatively short period on top of that i just received so many messages from people saying that they've had awful experiences owning mclaren cars whenever i've driven one something's kind of gone wrong electronic or mechanical and so i've just always felt let down but something's happened since that mclaren special episode of the podcast went out well actually two things have happened firstly a lot of sort of happy mclaren owners got in touch and said look we're a little bit sick of the bad press mclaren cars get on social media because you can't really go longer than a month these days without seeing a center burnt down or someone pulling apart the interior of their 720s with great ease and then it's like come on we're out here we're only in the clouds we're having a great time our cars don't have any issues we love them and we want people to know that we're having a great time and then secondly and fair play to them mclaren themselves got in touch i've always had a good working relationship with mclaren but it'd been a while since we spoke and they said look we listen to the podcast and we get some of those frustrations that you're having and we feel like we're addressing them because you're not the only person but we've listened to the feedback and we think we're doing things better so can we get you in can we have a chat can we work out how to get you excited about this brand once again full disclosure i'm not being paid it's not a paid promotion it's not an endorsement i'm not making money if mclaren end up selling cars off the back of this video although i wish i was it's just well very brave pr from mclaren and then also me willing to give them and wanting to give them a second chance because yes how cool is it to have an epic british supercar maker we need them to challenge ferrari porsche lamborghini to fly the union jack flag on a race track but also as an f1 not an f1 obsessive mclaren one of the most historic and iconic teams in that sport and i should have always dreamed of having a ferrari and a mclaren in the garage but but these days i don't so we're going to start again fresh slate let's pretend instead of the 540c live all those years ago i've just picked up this as my first mclaren s720s spider let's face it we all relatively familiar with the 720s but in my mind this car is kind of where it started to go a little bit wrong for mclaren when it launched i didn't particularly gel with it i've come to realize that its breadth of capabilities kind of really make it above a lot of its competition but it's where they kind of started to get a lot of the complaints around build quality the cars lost a ton of money they went wrong people were sending them back and as i say the negativity creeped in but apparently this is one of the areas that mclaren have really addressed the build quality of a 720s now is supposedly much improved and that's what i want to find out because i got the key to this car for four days and i want to pretend like it's the first four days of owning this car because when i picked up my 540c i barely slept the night before i went to collect it i was so excited to have my first supercar on mclaren and an hour and a half down the road it went bong esc fault return to dealer and that was a pretty heart-crushing moment and just the start of things and i'm hoping there's going to be nothing like that i'm praying there's going to be nothing like that and instead i'm just going to enjoy i'm going to love i'm going to be excited by every second i spend with this car and you've got to think that's not going to be hard because it's nuts [Music] oh [Music] well welcome to day two with the mclaren 720s spider i have to say i was quite excited to get down here to stg hq today to spend more time with this car yesterday was a good day i actually text mclaren saying is this some kind of mso special because it sounds ridiculous i'm waiting for the reply on that but yeah everything just kind of came together but i do remember having a very similar experience two or three years ago when mclaren lent me a 720s track pack car to down to monaco for the grand prix in the first few days i was like oh this is so good wow what a car but then bits of trim start to fall off and i had the racing seats and and the actual sort of you know material on the seats start to pull away and that was kind of the start of a whole load of issues with that car so it's it's still early days but before we crack on with today's plans i thought to do a bit of a sip check out what's going on talk to you about some elements that i noticed with the car and then yes we'll be heading out and about i have to say i'm always a fan of a colorful supercar but i think color really suits the 720s because i've seen so many sort of silver black gray cars over the year but a bright orange one just makes you feel a little bit more special a little bit more exciting dare i say it in a few days we're going to talk about sort of what i think the spider element brings to the 720 but i think one thing it might take away from is is the overall looks of the car i feel like the back's a little bit fussy now and maybe not as clean as it once was but weird i'm saying sort of clean because i think when this car originally launched we were all sort of flabbergasted by the looks and it is still a bit marmite i think maybe i've got used to the looks it's more acceptable these big gaping holes for the headlights and stuff but i still can't decide whether i think it's really good looking or just a bit fugly certain angles make me feel different ways about this car well inside this car the color continues uh we've got the fully electric comfort seats in here i think personally i would have chosen the bucket seats because hashtag supercar uh but i suppose these are easier and comfier to live with on a day-to-day basis uh the controls for mclaren's electric seats always in a very weird place they're kind of right under your thigh next to the central console just find them hard to reach and figure out so a small complaint but yeah it just really annoys me that uh what's quite cool though about this car is it is obviously a spider so the roof folds away but we still have a panoramic glass sunroof despite the fact that that whole panel folds away so i think that's quite nice and it's got that technology in it where if i push this button changes color and becomes shaded helping bodies like me from getting sunburned through the sunroof because that that does actually happen but i prefer it when it lets all the light into the cabin let's see if that keeps working for the next four days i hope it does it's a nice feature especially if the sun comes back out now today i'm going to kind of use this car in and around town to do some boring and mundane tasks to see if it can cope with the stresses of boring and mundane tasks historically traditionally mclarens have always been so comfortable they can be quiet it's very easy to maneuver easy to see out and it's actually something i kind of struggle with because i feel like it loses a bit of its personality around town it it's so good at sitting in traffic or i don't know what's going to the supermarket i could be in anything i don't know i'm in a supercar i mean this car's orange so it reminds me that i've been something kind of crazy but maybe it's just a sign that i shouldn't be using a car like this in and around town to do mundane tasks but but why not if i've just spent what 250 grand on a car i'm going to use it as much as i possibly can so yes first off i'm off to my friend's studio he's called alex uh it goes by what the game is an incredible artist that's just kind of i guess automotive inspired art and he's arranged a whole lot of stuff to be put into sdghq which is so cool uh he's not around at the moment but he sent me his key to his studios that i can test out the boot or the or the space of this car because we've lost a little bit of practicality over the coupe so i thought it'd be worthwhile seeing how much art i can fit the 720s spider and then we're gonna go to the butchers because well yeah why not as i say two relatively straightforward tests uh to see if this car can yeah can cope and remain reliable in and around town oh my god look at this [Music] oh okay artwork collected chicken roast chicken for the weekend also collected ginger pig by the way very famous london butcher very very good if you can find them and here comes a parking attendant to tell me that i've parked illegally i think he's just he's giving me the evil eye that was uh you should leave because i didn't didn't pay for my parking cause only five minutes anyway boring uh so let's get out of here let's um let's head off in the car and i reckon you know what it's it's held up as expected pretty well no no complaints in and around town i'm quite desperate i have to say to get out of town again because yeah that's where this car i think is most impressive so tomorrow if the weather's this good we'll go and find some nice twisties again and i'll explain why i think this spider variant has added to the 720s package [Music] [Music] is so it's been a good few days with this car no complaints no issues to talk about it's just been fun and exciting and fast oh so fast i don't feel like i need to kind of review the 720s i think we all know it's insanely quick and well as i remind myself also very practical very useful very comfortable i actually think it's closer to a new turbo s than an f8 spider it's one of those cars that you can kind of use in every situation and it just excels in all of them you know what this kind of spider element has has helped give this car a little bit more personality a bit more character because i can use that rear window that sort of rear hatch to let in a bit of sort of noise and and the elements without even having to put the roof down means that well i can always remind myself i'm in a supercar because as i kind of mentioned when i was cruising around town sometimes with these mclarens but they lose a sense of what they are how special they can be and they become a bit bland but when you drop that window put yourself into sport mode and do this it's pretty electrifying and when you're just cruising around in town you can still get some of that noise you can still get these pops and cracks on this ridiculous exhaust and and that was needed so yeah i'm a big fan of the spider element and as i say i just really enjoyed spending time with this car so where does that leave me with mclaren in general you know what i said it in the podcast that podcast special a few months ago that you know on their day when everything comes together the clowns are fantastic they're sometimes unbeatable but what this experience has kind of shown me is that maybe that's not the case anymore because you know everything hasn't come together during this experience it's the middle of winter i don't think it's got over five degrees celsius for the three four days i've had the keys to this car it's greasy i've used it in town i've used it on the motorway i've put shopping i mean you know i just haven't used it for special drives on sunny mountain roads but every time i've gone in every time i've sort of walked up to i'd be like oh this is exciting whereas previously i walked up to being like oh is this gonna work so i know i need to spend more time i know i can't sort of base everything and and judge everything on this one experience and i know cynical people amongst you will be going well come on sam it's a press car you know they're going to have made sure that nothing goes wrong but i'll have you know that the majority of issues i've experienced with mclaren cars in the past have been with press cars or factory because i've driven more cars from mtc than customer cars so it's not a surefire bet that just because mclaren are handing you the keys it's gonna work better than a customer handing you the keys so you know i'm encouraged but i need to see if all these kind of changes have been implemented with all the other models and i'd like to spend like three four five months with this car to really understand if they've taken this big step in the right direction but boy does it feel like they have because i am really enjoying every second i'm spending with this car it's so quick i'm fully aware that quality control is not the only issue that some people have with mclarens i think a lot of people also don't like the fact that they lose a ton of money and i'm not going to say well i don't care because i suffered from that with 505.40c but there are a ton of amazing cars from amazing manufacturers that lose a ton of money bentley continental gt one of my favorite cars at the moment loses a ton of money uh ferrari my beloved ferrari gtc4 lusso loses a ton of money it happens and i don't think we can hold that wholly against mclaren there'll be a number of reasons as to why it happens but it might be the case that we just have to suck it up if you want to own a mclaren you're gonna have to accept that you're probably gonna lose a lot of money like with aston martin in a db11 or or advantage for example in addition to that i know a lot of people say well they all look the same they have the same engine and i'm confused by the lineup but actually i think over the years mclaren's kind of lineup strategy has started to make more sense at the beginning it felt like there was just tons of cars coming out of where always replacing each other superseding each other and it's like what's going on but nowadays you've got the ultimate series for the centers or the p ones or the ruthless windscreenless elva you've got the super series for the 720s the 765lt and then the sport series for the upcoming artura the all-new hybrid v6 engine sports car and the gt so firstly we're going to see a new engine from mclaren finally but secondly i think it's quite simple and actually ferrari porsche they're all kind of making just as many cars these days there's really any lambo that's standing out making what three models hurricane aventador euros i think i got that right so as i say those things for me aren't as much of a concern as the quality control issues have been over the years but i am impressed i'm hopeful that's what is i'm hopeful because even though i'm trying to sort of you know wipe a clean slate and start again and as great as this experience has been every time i have got in this car i'm still nervous i'm going reaching for that start button being like please start and and every time i hear a knock or crack i look at the dashboard waiting for sort of lights to flash up at me so as much as i'm trying i can't let go of the past i'm still haunted by prior experiences but fingers crossed this year and moving forward i spend a lot more time around mclarens and i can see whether these changes have been rolled out across the line whether these are here to stay whether moving forward we can have confidence that buying car as amazing as this it's gonna work at which point we should all be buying cars like this because hashtag british supercar and how amazingly capable this thing is anyway i hope you guys found this interesting and and insightful let me know your thoughts below is it time to give mclaren a fresh start are you a mclaren owner out there who's had a good experience that you want to sort of celebrate and you're tired sick and tired of the negativity let me know in the comment section below please give this video a thumbs up if you've enjoyed it helps other people see the video and see my channel and make sure you stay subscribed for plenty more videos to come [Music] [Music]

Channel: Seen Through Glass

Views: 141,193

Keywords: seenthroughglass, seen through glass, mclaren, mclaren 720, mclaren 720s, mclaren 720s spider, 720s, 720s spider, living with a mclaren, owning a mclaren, mclaren running costs, mclaren issues, mclaren problems, mclaren supercar, mclaren cars, supercar

Id: o-W5Cexf7YI

Length: 18min 5sec (1085 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021