Nor am I going to bang on about its handling, because you will have guessed correctly that it’s superb. All I’d observe is that anyone who ever wondered about the merit of retaining old style hydraulic steering over the now near ubiquitous electric systems would wonder no more if they drove this. The GT’s steering, like that of all McLarens, is hydraulic and wildly better for it. I hope they keep it forever.
But what about the stuff you tend not to read about in the road tests? What’s it like to climb into at 5:00am on a cold and frosty morning? In the main, better than I had expected. On one occasion the driver’s door refused to open because it was iced up, but I just opened the passenger door, ran the engine for a couple of minutes and all was fine. Once on board warning chimes start pinging alarmingly telling you that all four tyres are flat which seems something of a coincidence, but if you dive into the sub-menu that gives actual tyre pressures, you can see their pressures are down a little only because it’s so cold, but they recover very quickly and are thereafter fine. I put that down to someone setting the warnings to come on too early rather than an inherent fault in the car’s software.
In other areas it’s unexpectedly brilliant. It clears its screens quicker than the aforementioned Golf (I know, I’ve got one), the traction systems are superb so it always feels incredibly sure footed on uncertain surfaces, the headlights are simply outstanding and if the heated seats were any hotter you’d have to wear asbestos pants. They do have a low setting too…