Abigail Bassett

Abigail Bassett

Abigail Bassett

Abigail Bassett

Abigail Bassett

Abigail Bassett

Abigail Bassett

I sent my mom a photo of the grey, alien-looking sports car hunkered low in my driveway.

"What is THAT?" She typed back.

"McLaren 570S," I thumbed at the screen, followed by an elaborate string of emoticons.

The truth is there probably aren’t enough emoticons in the entirety of the Internet to embody just how mind-bendingly good the McLaren 570S is. This new entry point to the McLaren supercar world may start just shy of $200,000 (£143,250 in the UK), but after spending a weekend in it, it’s clear that all that scratch is well worth it.

First, there’s the fact that the company behind the second oldest team in Formula 1 builds this "starter" supercar, and it has some pretty serious championship hardware under its belt to prove its mettle. McLaren has won 182 F1 races, 12 driver’s championships and eight constructor championships over its history, and it has attracted some of the best drivers in the world with its track machines.

With all of that racing experience, McLaren knows how to build fast, light cars. How does that translate to everyday driving? Well, you saw our review of the McLaren 650S Spider didn't you? The company has taken the know-how of its long and storied racing past and translated it to the street.

McLaren entered the consumer market nearly 25 years ago when it first produced its center-drive, three-seat, all-carbon fiber road car, the McLaren F1 in 1992. The F1 was designed to be the "finest sports car the world had ever seen," and it can fetch as much as $12 million at auction today. There were only 106 built (only 69 of which were road cars), so you can expect the price of the F1 to continue to climb. McLaren also partnered with Mercedes-Benz for the McLaren-Mercedes SLR, which to this day remains relatively unloved in the world of McLarens.

Fast-forward to the 21st century when McLaren decided to launch a standalone (separate from the F1 racing team) automotive brand that would launch at least one consumer-oriented car per calendar year going forward. its first car off the production line in Woking, just outside of London, was the McLaren MP4-12C, now known as just the 12C.

Since the 12C’s launch in 2011, McLaren has launched a single car every year across its range, each one with the same turbocharged 3.8L V8 engine and variations on its carbon fiber chassis. In 2015 McLaren implemented a three-tier system to its brand. These levels include the "entry level" Sport Series, the mid-level and core of the McLaren brand Super Series, and the top level Ultimate Series, where the sold-out P1 hypercar lives.

The 570S falls into the Sport Series. It's somewhat laughable that a car with a $235,060 price tag, as tested, can be termed "entry level," but hey, reality is a rather flexible thing when you’re behind the wheel of a McLaren. The 570S Coupe itself falls in the middle of its Sport Series range with the 540C (which is not available in the U.S.), and the 570GT bookending it. McLaren calls the 570S the "most usable and attainable" of the McLaren line-up and it features the same MonoCell II chassis as that in the Super Series line. The chassis has been slightly revamped for the 570S to make getting in and out of the baby supercar a bit less awkward. Truth be told though, you still have to clamber over wide door sills that are not date-in-a-dress friendly—but entry and exit is far better than in the 12C. The chassis itself weighs just 57kg (125lbs) yet is stiffer than a comparable aluminum chassis.

Rather than being sheathed in carbon fiber like its big brothers, the 570S is mostly clothed in superformed aluminum. The superforming process uses super-heated aluminum to allow molding of intricate forms, like those at the rear deck of the car. Buttresses, or "tendons" as McLaren calls them, are made of resin and a lightweight core, reinforcing the rear of the car.

Those buttresses not only give the McLaren 570S a striking silhouette, they also provide structured air flow both across the mid-mounted engine bay that sits beneath a honeycomb of vents, and across the roof to keep the car planted. The buttresses equalize the low air pressure that builds at speed over the convex roofline and directs it over the engine to help reduce heat that can be seen shimmering above it from inside the cabin. The rear window is concave to help improve visibility from inside the car, and a fixed rear spoiler further helps clean up airflow at the back of the car. Taking cues from their F1 brethren, engineers at McLaren carefully designed the rear diffuser to channel air beneath the car as well. McLaren calls the overall look of the body wrapped around its core functional elements "shrink-wrapped design."

Design aside, the McLaren 570S gets a newly designed suspension system that uses adaptive dampers and front and rear anti-roll bars to handle any bumps you may come across on your trip about town. You do get the option to adjust those dampers using a set of dials in the center console between the seats. One labeled with an H for handling, and one labeled with a P for Powertrain. Each dial can be individually adjusted based on desired response. Toggling the H selector to Normal leaves the McLaren 570S in what would equate to the "comfort" setting in a typical sports car, resulting in a setup that is stiff and communicative but not punishing. One tick up is Sport, which stiffens the ride further and makes the steering a tiny bit more direct. The top level is Track which, when used on anything but a smooth road, is rather punishing.

On the Powertrain knob, you can shift the McLaren 570S into Normal, Sport, or Track as well, and with each level you get an increasing shift speed and higher revs before needing to shift. In Track Mode, the 570S also gets the Inertia Push technology that McLaren first used in the 650S. Above 2,500rpm (and at 60 percent throttle input), the inertia of the flywheel delivers a burst of torque as the next gear is engaged, limiting deceleration as you upshift. Rev matching happens whether you’re in manual or automatic mode in the 570S and McLaren uses the same cylinder-cut technology and seven-speed seamless slip gearbox (SSG) that is present on the 650S, but the gearbox clutch control and the engine control are separate in the 570S. In Normal and Sport modes the engine response is good, though not quite what you’d expect from McLaren. It feels just a touch sluggish—and that’s not a result of turbo lag. Track mode is the sweet spot for the expected quick and responsive thrust you want from something wearing the Speed Mark logo.

The mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, entry-level supercar puts out 562hp (419kW) and 443lb-ft (600Nm) of torque at 5,000-6,500rpm. The M838TE, 3.8L twin-turbo power plant that is present throughout the line, however, gets 30 percent new components in the 570S, according to McLaren. These include new 60-degree camshaft phase controllers and the removal of the vacuum system, saving weight and simplifying the engine. The 570S does get the same dry sump design as the 650S to help keep oil flowing in high cornering speeds, and the same flat-plane crankshaft which allows the engine to be placed lower for better handling. McLaren says that the 570S will do 0-60 in just 3.1 seconds. There is also a new start-stop system that just gives the barest whiff of "green" driving. In truth we saw barely 11 mpg average in our jaunts about the Hill Country around a rainy Austin, Texas.

Can you really blame a supercar for bad mileage? No. Efficiency in a car like this is certainly not the name of the game—and you really do want to get away from the lookie-loos as quickly as possible, dusting them in a string of lewd emoticons and raucous noise.

Listing image by Abigail Bassett