The $3 Million McLaren P1 GTR is the Most Thrilling Car I've Ever Driven

this is a mclaren p1 gtr and it's the high performance race track only version of the mclaren p1 hypercar this is valued around 3 million dollars and it's not designed for street use or legal for you to drive on the road but this one has been modified to make it street legal so today i'm going to review it the mclaren p1 gtr one of the craziest cars you can drive on the road [Music] before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my new online enthusiast car auction website for cool modern cars if you're looking to sell a cool car from the modern era the 1980s and up cars and bids is the place to do it you will get the most views and the most money for your cool car and if you're looking to buy a cool modern enthusiast car you will find the best selection with daily auctions of amazing stuff on cars and bids so check it out cars and bids at carsandbids.com i've borrowed this p1 gtr from mclaren newport beach which is the mclaren dealership here in newport beach in southern california they have an amazing mclaren inventory including this p1 gtr which is currently for sale they also have a sena and all of the new mclaren models if you're looking for the ultimate in mclaren inventory check out mclaren newport beach by clicking the link in the description below first a little overview now you probably already know the regular mclaren p1 million dollar crazy hyper car with about 900 horsepower meant to rival the porsche 918 spider and the la ferrari well after mclaren finished making the 375 units of the p1 they planned to build they decided to make something a little crazier and that's this car the p1 gtr the p1 gtr has about 80 horsepower more than a regular mclaren p1 bringing the total horsepower to just under a thousand it's also around 100 pounds lighter than a regular p1 and it has better downforce and grip all of these changes were important for the p1 gtr's purpose race track use mclaren built 58 of these for the entire world all intended for racetrack only driving but they didn't all stay track only a motorsports company called lanzante offered a package that allowed p1 gtr owners to convert their cars to street legal for a cost of around seven hundred thousand dollars in addition to the cost of the car so today i'm going to review this street legal converted p1 gtr first i'm going to show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road which should be insane and then i'll give it a doug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the p1 gtr by discussing some of the changes that make this different from the regular p1 and that means starting with the most obvious one this wing which is absolutely massive gigantic huge fixed in place unlike the one on the regular p1 which rises up when it's necessary and it covers the whole width of the car this wing is so tall that it's four inches wider than the wing on the regular p1 even when that wing is all the way up this thing is huge and of course there are far more exterior upgrades than just that for one the gtr is two inches lower than a regular p1 and the normal car wasn't exactly an suv so that's pretty notable and up front you have this giant front splitter very low carbon fiber seems extremely expensive so i hope i don't damage that when i go drive this car you also have these little canards they call them on the side of the front fender in front of the front wheels all of these things contribute to downforce and this car has about 10 percent more downforce than a regular p1 again an impressive number because the regular p1 was already a hyper car so get 10 percent more downforce that's pretty impressive some other notable exterior changes for one thing the glass roof that you would get on the regular p1 is gone replaced instead by carbon fiber panels same deal with the engine cover the glass panel and the regular p1 also gone again replaced by a carbon fiber panel this is all to save weight and speaking of the engine another major change to the p1 gtr this car has more power than a standard p1 and not a small amount around 80 horsepower more than a regular p1 and the standard p1 already has like 900 horsepower so this thing is just shy of a thousand horsepower it's about 60 more horses from the v8 the twin turbo v8 in this car and around 20 more horsepower from the electric motor combined for a total of a little more than 80. around back another powertrain change is the exhaust you can see on the gtr you have these massive unfinished exhausts coming out the middle of the rear they look like cannons they are not attractive or beautiful they are functional and they send of course all of the exhaust back out of the engine they also sound amazing take a listen to this exhaust [Music] now in addition to all the aero upgrades and the powertrain changes this car also has some substantial weight reduction compared to a regular p1 i already showed you those carbon panels on the top but there's more than that this car loses around a hundred pounds compared to a standard p1 with some changes like polycarbonate windows instead of standard glass to make it lighter and better for the racetrack so the windows don't shatter and create dangerous glass shards that are flying around if you get into an accident except that isn't actually true take a look at these windows and they look just like regular windows from a regular car and that's because this p1 gtr has been converted from a race car to a road car and that means swapping back to road car windows to conform to regulations and in fact i hold here a list of all the changes from lonzante all the things they've done to convert the p1 gtr from a race car to a street legal road-going vehicle and there are quite a few changes that had to be made in order to do this now the windows are one like i just said but there's a lot more they had to replace the ecu for instance they had to remap the engine so it could run on pump gas they also had to add ignition keys because race cars don't come with them and they had to add locking and unlocking doors because race cars don't bother with that frivolous stuff as well this car also had to be equipped with an axle lifter in the front so it can clear stuff because like i mentioned it's two inches lower than a regular p1 be impossible to drive if it didn't have an axle lifter lonzante also modified this so that the steering wheel can turn more if you've ever driven a race car you know there's like a half turn and then the steering wheel locks but on the road where you might have to make tight turns or u-turns that approach is not realistic so they change that to a more rational road car approach the wheels can turn more than they can on the race car but that meant they had to install longer brake lines so that when the wheels turn the brake lines aren't stretched out and they can turn along with the wheels you also have a hand brake that had to be added to it the race car doesn't have it they replaced the headlights with like dot spec they added a horn and after all that they sent all the original parts to the customer so if they ever wanted to go back to a pure race car and remove the street legal conversion they could do it and take the car back to how it was originally built when it left the factory anyway now that i've covered all the p1 gtr changes to make this into a race car and then the lanzante changes to make it back into a road car let's go through some of the other quirks and features of this vehicle starting with getting in you look at the door there's no obvious door handle for most cars you just reach your hand into this little air scoop there's a handle in there you open the door but not the p1 instead you reach your hand in here and there's a little circular button that you have to find you find it's a little hidden and then you push it and the door pops and then you can open it up the rest of the way and you have your door that opens upward like you would expect from a crazy hyper car like the p1 now obviously that's an electronic door opener pushing that button in the door popping open but if you don't have any battery power and you want to open the doors manually that is behind the side windows you can see this little latch back here quite large opens up the door you pull on that the door mechanically opens and then you can open it up just in case there's no battery power and you can't get into the car using the traditional popper but anyway once you get the door open on the p1 gtr you can see on the door sill on the driver's side there's a little plaque that lets you know which chassis number you have this is number one this is the very first p1 gtr ever made now i get into a lot of cars with chassis number plaques and they're usually number 37 of 100 or 350 of 475 or whatever having number one that's pretty cool this is a very special car the first p1 gtr but anyway when you climb inside the first thing you notice is undoubtedly the steering wheel now for one thing this is detachable like it is in most race cars you can pull the steering wheel off to make it easier to get in or out but you don't really need to it's easy enough to get inside this car with the steering wheel on that you can leave it in place as for the wheel itself it is really cool for one thing it isn't actually a wheel you can see it's not circular instead it's sort of horizontal a rectangle basically like most race car steering wheels have evolved to and as you can see there's more cool stuff to the steering wheel then just that in the center you have a lot of buttons and switches basically everything you'd have in a normal car's center control stack and in a normal car steering wheel has been confined to just the steering wheel in this vehicle for instance at the top you have these two dials these are your drive modes they're not in the middle they're on the steering wheel itself over on the left the one marked e you can control the level of traction control you're driving with over on the right the one marked h you control the car's handling setup and you have three options for that one you have wet track and race there's no comfort there's no sport it's all track in this car you just decide whether you're in a race whether it's wet or whether you want simple track which is the p1 gtr's version of comfort in other cars some other interesting buttons on the steering wheel one is neutral this red button over to the right you want to engage in neutral you push that and then the car is in neutral and the car starts in neutral every time if you want to engage first gear you pull the right shift paddle behind the steering wheel and then you're in first if you want to engage reverse you start in neutral press the red button and then you pull the left shift paddle and then reverse engage it's like a downshift from neutral basically that's how you can think about it and that's how you switch through the gears again no gear levers in the center like in basically everything else next up another interesting button on the steering wheel one of the most prominent in the bottom right you have the engine start stop button of course you press that in order to turn on or off the p1 gtr you also have some other performance related buttons on here in the upper right you have ipass the regular p1 has this too you can press this for like a temporary boost of energy from the electric motor if you want to go even faster than the speed that this car already travels there's also a similar button in the center marked boost you can press for like a similar boost of energy to the left in the center you have a launch that would be this car's launch control button which i can only imagine how terrifyingly brutal that start would be and then in the lower left you have the e-mode buttons which allow you to switch over to pure electric driving you don't have that much range maybe like 10-15 miles but you do have a little bit of electric driving if you want to start this car up early in the morning take it out of your garage without waking up your neighbors or your family sleeping in your house but my very favorite button on this steering wheel in the upper left you have the horn this yellow button here no horn in the center there's other more important stuff there it's off to the side and it's yellow and when you press it it sounds pretty normal actually just like a normal car's horn it's just activated in a very strange way now the other interesting thing about this steering wheel is the paddle shifters which are attached to the steering wheel behind it they are small and they are carbon fiber and they feel oh so wonderful to click of course you have up shift on the right downshift on the left no labels for those because the kind of people who buy this car don't need you to tell them which is upshift and which is downshift but that's where the paddles are smaller and less obtrusive than they are in most normal cars but they feel great when you click them into the next gear or go to downshift and next up i want to move on to all the other changes to this interior from the regular p1 to make the p1 gtr and by the way i have reviewed a regular p1 you can compare this with i will link that in the description below this car has some big differences and one in the center control stack is these switches marked l and r giant things you can pull those are for the doors you want to get out in the driver's side pull l the door unlatches and then you can climb out that's a big difference compared to the regular p1's door handles which are mounted on the sides of the seats left and right here it's right in the center with these out of place looking l and r handles next up we'll move to the top of the center control stack you have a switch here labeled master this controls master power for the vehicle race cars need this because they don't come with ignition keys so that's how you turn them on or off this car since it has a key it's not really necessary lamborghini newport beach generally leaves this on because you can turn off the car using the engine start button on the steering wheel and then lock it and walk away with the key it's kind of redundant now next to master you have a button marked fire never press that unless there's a fire if you push that it activates this car's built-in fire suppression system there are little nozzles throughout the car inside and out that will spray foam to try to stop a fire so if you get into a crash on the racetrack help is on the way but you want to try to put out the fire you press that and then hopefully the foam shoots out and it extinguishes the fire all new race cars have this feature you don't really need it on a road car and i hope that button is never accidentally pushed because cleaning all that foam out is kind of a disaster now where does that foam live that would be the passenger side footwell you can see this little canister in here not a traditional fire extinguisher like in some cars you can detach it and spray instead this houses the foam for the fire suppression system you can see it's hooked into the center console on this little control unit for the system and so that's how you do the fire extinguisher in your p1 gtr and next up another change to the gtr compared to the regular p1 is the camera system inside this car because there are several interior cameras one is mounted over on the dashboard you can see it's pointing towards you towards the driver while you're driving the other one is over the driver's shoulder up here on the ceiling and it's pointed forward and the reason for that is your track telemetry system that's built into this car if you take this on the racetrack and then you want to watch your race laps later you can use the data from these cameras to see where your hand movements were where you were turning how fast you were going etc and so that's why these cameras are here and that's why one of them actually points toward the driver i guess to see facial movements or head movements or whatever while you're driving now interestingly in spite of this relatively advanced camera system this car does not have a backup camera you shift into reverse no camera appears and it doesn't even have a rear view mirror you can see mounted up here no mirror at all not that it would matter because the glass engine cover from the regular p1 was replaced with that carbon panel so there's no rear window you can even see out of so rear visibility in this car is a disaster now interestingly there is a rear-facing camera in this car mounted on the back you can see it here like just behind the passenger compartment facing back but that is also part of the track telemetry system just like the interior cameras you use that to watch your race laps later replays of them you can't actually use it for a functional purpose like driving the car where it would be probably a little bit more useful for road use and next up moving on between the seats in the interior there's a nice little tidbit it's this plaque from lonzante that lets you know you have a road conversion p1 gtr it tells you what number in this case road conversion number three gtr chassis number one that plaque is there to remind you again how special you are beyond just the specialness of the standard p1 gtr plaque in your driver's door sill now it's worth noting that just because lonzante converted this car to road use does not mean that they converted it into a luxury car quite the opposite in fact still feels very much like a race car in here very stripped down and there are examples of that everywhere for instance look at the door panel there's just a carbon fiber panel and a pull to close the door you don't have any storage on here you don't have any high quality luxuries that's all you get just carbon and the door pull and there are more examples than that of the lack of luxuries in this car for instance this ceiling mounted camera for your track telemetry system it just has an exposed wire running back from it and into the camera receiver or the system that does not look very luxurious and speaking of exposed stuff behind the seats you can see there's just a bunch of exposed electronics and any other car they would cover this up with a panel to make it look nice but not in the gtr this is a race car panels are unnecessary they add weight they can fly around you don't need it so they don't have one and check this out the infotainment screen you press the home button and you are shown only one single app and that would be climate now interestingly this car does have air conditioning you press that you can turn on the ac but you have nothing else in here there's no navigation system there's no radio all of the usual apps that would be in your mclaren infotainment system are gone you have just one thing you can adjust and that's the climate control and it gets even crazier if you press this little gear icon to go to settings you have only three options one is about the infotainment system the legal stuff they have to put in there the next is turn off the screen and the last one is advanced settings and if you go in there you can pretty much only use it to reset the system to the factory defaults that's it three settings and one app one thing you can control there's basically nothing in this car in terms of controllable technology now the gauge cluster screen is a little bit more useful than that but still not very this car is very stripped down no luxuries no excesses even though it costs three million dollars but anyway moving down from the button to turn on the fire suppression system a few more interesting items in the center here this little dial turns on your headlights and a lot of cars that's to the left of the steering wheel not here it's right in the center and that's how you turn them on below that you have a button labeled screen you press that and it turns on your heated windshield this car has heating coils going through the windshield to keep it warm i guess maybe if you're racing on an icy day you don't want it to ice up you can turn on your heated windshield now further down in the center console you have these two buttons these are of course your window switches to lower raise your power windows the regular p1 gtr does not have those instead it has those polycarbonate windows and only a small little thing opens and it's manual but in the road conversion you get power windows back you also get a parking brake back again like i mentioned the race car does not have a parking brake but the road car does and this is how you turn it on and next up something else you notice right away when you climb into the p1 gtr there is no storage anywhere in this interior anywhere this car has no glove box for storing stuff there's no storage in the center console there's no storage between the seats there's no storage on the door panels there is truly no storage anywhere in this interior not very practical fortunately the front trunk opens up although it doesn't open in the traditional manner where you press a button and it pops open instead you have to push these little buttons there's one at each corner of the front trunk you push all four of them and then you can lift off the front trunk panel manually the entire thing comes off and that gives you access to what's in your front area although as you can see that's not storage either this isn't a storage compartment it is functional there are mechanical components in here you don't want to put anything up there to store it that would not go well as a result this car pretty much has zero storage but that's about what you'd expect from a race car because when you go racing it's not like you're looking for a place to put your wallet or some luggage you're taking on a trip you're racing and so if you get one of these you just have to be cool with the fact that you're not putting anything anywhere except maybe the passenger seat if no one's riding with you and speaking of opening up exterior panels in this car the one in back opens up the same way you can see these little buttons mounted on this rear clam shell but it is massive i think this is a two or three person job i'm not going to bother taking it off but if you wanted to get into the engine that's how you would do it you kind of pop these buttons and pull off the clamshell now speaking of the rear of this car i do want to point out mention this in my regular p1 review but it's worth reiterating i love the turn signals and brake lights in this car this little line that follows the rear fender body line in back i think this is one of the coolest best most distinctive turn signal brake light designs in the entire car industry i love that they did it very subtle and of course the same design is carried over to the p1 gtr even race cars have brake lights that's not something lonzante had to add back to this one interesting item back here also is just how exposed everything is in back the regular p1 has some panels covering up everything back here but in this car those panels are gone probably for weight reduction or maybe servicing and you can see and access everything back here and get a little glimpse into the inner workings of the p1 from the back that's a pretty cool view by the way one thing i love about this trunk or non-trunk as it actually is once you get under this panel there's a little label that gives emergency personnel instructions of what to do in case there's an accident or a fire so if you're an emergency worker and you come up to a damaged p1 gtr all you got to do is push down each of these four little trunk buttons individually and then lift off the trunk panel and then you will have your instructions on what to do if there is a raging fire very helpful information mclaren and finally one more exterior item worth noting in the p1 gtr where's the fuel door and same deal with the electric charge port because i know this is a plug-in hybrid it can run on electric power you got to be able to charge it somewhere so where's the charge port door i looked everywhere couldn't find him until i looked under this little panel on the roof right in front of the engine you push on this button pop it open and there's your fuel door and over on the other side same deal you push in this little button pop it open and there's your charge port these little panels that are sort of hinged to have kind of a gull wing appearance they sort of mimic the doors they conceal the fuel door and the charge port so you don't have to have them just sort of sticking out or somewhere uglier it's a nice spot for them and so those are the quirks and features of the mclaren p1 gtr now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives let's do it all right driving the p1 gtr i'm wearing a mask because i'm accompanied by someone from lamborghini newport beach which is probably for the best given the value of this car i am terrified first thing you notice uh it's loud in here loud loud loud it's a race car they're always insanely loud they remove all sorts of sound deadening pretty much anything for comfort is gone and so we have the noise the next thing you notice is it is unbelievably rough riding i mean this is as serious as it gets people with their gt3 rs's they think they're hard edged this is a whole different world this is an actual race car on the road and not just any race car it's a thousand horsepower craziness you also just feel so low and i always feel low in supercars but this is on the next level of low i will say it's a little bit more comfortable than a lot of the other race cars that i've been in getting in and out not having to remove the steering wheel is kind of a surprise to me this seat while tight is not so prohibitively tight that it's impossible it's not that bad you couldn't drive this frequently if you were absolutely insane now on the road it really does feel like one of the craziest cars and you're reminded everywhere of the fact that you are not driving a traditional vehicle obviously the noise the lowness but i mean i'm not i'm looking at the steering wheel it's not a wheel it's just like a race car steering contraption basically and it's so brutal in here i am obsessed with these shift pedals they are fantastic to pull i feel like i want to keep shifting i love manual transmissions but when paddles feel this good that's helpful too sitting in a stumplet in this car even that is kind of a brutal experience i mean it's tight in here it's loud i i always comment on supercars i'm always surprised how reasonable they are when you're sitting at a traffic light like oh it's it's not that bad you could drive it i mean this thing you know what you're in at all times to me this car is like an 80s italian supercar in the modern era so many exotic cars have gotten so neutralized and so neutered and they're so reasonable this is like that this is these are this is the kind of car you make serious compromises to drive because it's the most insane thing you can imagine and it is the most insane thing i can imagine i don't know that i have ever driven a car on the road that is this sort of brutal and excessive i mean you feel every bump everything just jostles you around it feels like there's no suspension at all i can't believe people would want to convert this to road use and use it on the road but you certainly want up every person other than you oh my god that noise it's so it just feels fast and the sound that happens when you accelerate i've never heard anything like that feels like the world is ending oh my god oh my god i'm not even really flooring it i'm not even close i'm just terrified but also the sound is so insane even at this rpm and this is insane this is the craziest thing i've ever driven on the road ever i'm serious now one interesting thing about this car there's no rear view mirror there's no rear camera there's nothing you have no clue what's going on behind you except for the rear view mirrors which are like stylish they're not like intended for really practical use but you're faster than everything on the roads it doesn't really matter i have to admit before i drove this car i was absolutely terrified but now that i'm in it i am it's quite it's thrilling i'm so into this i don't know that i would want to do this often and i think it's crazy there are people who are actually using these but if you're looking for the craziest road experience this is it oh my god oh my god this is insane it's just the road comes at you so fast this is insane this is truly the craziest thing i've ever driven oh my god i've never i've never experienced something like this this is on a totally different level from the the road going supercars i'm serious the feeling of acceleration is like nothing i've i've ever ever felt in any it's incredible you're so close to the road and so you just are acutely aware of how fast you're going and you get going so fast got a little a little bump in the road other cars won't feel it it like throws this thing all the way around listen to that oh my god [Applause] i've i've never experienced anything like this ever and i drove the merced the mclaren 570 gt4 on a racetrack this is on a totally different level than that this feels louder it feels more immediate uh it feels more insane i'm going to think about this car every time someone on a gt3 rs tells me they have like the ultimate performance car for the road oh my god it's so insane it's i can't maybe i wouldn't put up with how brutal this car is for that level of acceleration it just gets to illegal speeds so fast i know all these supercars do but this one feels it the 918 and the regular p1 make it seem so easy and this car obviously it's easy too you just put your foot down but you feel like you're going a million miles an hour so fast this is the closest i've ever come on on the road to like a super bike or a crazy roller coaster the fastest thing you can imagine i've driven a lot of these cars every hyper car that's on the market devo and this is the most unreal ever been around and so that's the mclaren gtr this is an amazing car absolutely astonishingly fast and brutal in every way this car was never intended to be driven on the road and yet here i am driving one of the craziest street legal cars ever in the entire history of the planet anyway now it's time to give the p1 gtr a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the p1 gtr looks cool very attractive but not exactly classically beautiful with its huge wing and other aero modifications and it gets an 8 out of 10. acceleration to 0 to 60 in 2.7 seconds and it gets a 10 out of 10. handling is amazingly sharp and it easily gets a 10 out of 10. fun factor this might be the single most fun car i have ever driven in my entire life and it gets a 10 out of 10. finally cool factor and there's not even a slight doubt it gets a 10 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 48 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features this isn't well equipped at all and it gets a 2 out of 10. comfort is abysmal and it gets a 1 out of 10. quality is ok it's relatively nice and probably reasonably reliable but the interior is comically and intentionally low quality with exposed wires and edges this is no luxury car and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is laughably horrible and it gets a 1 out of 10. value is good this is like 3 million but based on the rarity and the thrill involved to me honestly based on similar vehicles i can't believe this isn't more money and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 16 out of 50. add it up and the doug score is 64 out of 100 which places it here against other supercars in this price bracket the p1 gtr is a car of extremes it's extremely difficult to operate on a day-to-day basis with a rough ride and zero practicality however it's extremely exciting for high performance driving duties hence the high weekend score this is the single most thrilling car i have ever driven period [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,267,908

Rating: 4.9245129 out of 5

Keywords: mclaren p1, p1 gtr, mclaren p1 gtr, p1 review, p1 gtr review, mclaren gtr, mclaren, mclaren review, mclaren p1 gtr review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: ZgUvD5m0q2Y

Length: 32min 50sec (1970 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rogersmj]

So...there's a road car, which was modified to become a track car (that's NOT legal on the road), which in turn is modified -- for a mere $700k -- to become road legal again by putting back all the things that were taken off to make it a track car.

[u/DodgerBlueRobert1]

That C8 driver at 29:24 probably felt like he had a piece of shit car for those few seconds.

[u/-Cizin-]

I feel like if there was ever a car Doug would get pulled over while reviewing, this is the one it would be in.

[u/zoffelder]

"Most thrilling car I've ever driven" clearly Doug forgot he's driven an NA Miata 😤

[u/1amathrowaway]

That is quite a livery for a car from a manufacturer lol

[u/[deleted]]

I love it when Doug demuro floors cars and his eyes start bulging and he freaks out

[u/JeskoRegistry]

From one glance, I'm sure anyone would say that this P1 GTR spec is pretty wild. Well, there are a lot of wild P1 GTR specs. For the curious reader, I've compiled a photo album of a handful of wild P1 GTR specs, ranging from iconic McLaren liveries (Harrods, West) to bold and slightly questionable colour schemes. Enjoy: https://imgur.com/a/392gfuo

One may also be quick to assume that these cars will be bought by sheiks in the Middle East and sit in a garage never to be driven. Au contraire monsieur. Most of the P1 GTRs have been tracked. Some of them are tracked by their owners frequently at circuits around the world from Spa to Laguna Seca to Bahrain International to Shanghai. These beasts are wicked fast on track and most of the owners truly push them to their limits. Absolutely wild.

[u/1amathrowaway]

Doug, over the years since you've driven so many cars, a lot of them now have a 10/10 for handling.

Are you starting to see some differences among all those 10/10s or do they all kind of feel the same?

[u/famousgunner95]

Someone NEEDS to make a video and take off that rear clamshell