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McLaren 600LT Spider First Drive Review | A Longtail benchmark

PHOENIX — Expectations were high as I strapped myself into the driver's seat of the 2020 McLaren 600LT Spider. The spec sheet looked promising: a twin-turbo 3.8-liter V8 producing 592 horsepower and 457 pound-feet of torque, a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission and a lightweight carbon fiber monocoque chassis. Plus, the 600LT's sinewy composite bodywork looks equally great in the real world. But it wasn't until I was connecting apexes and hitting curbs through the kinks that make up turns 14 and 15 at Arizona Motorsports Park just outside of Phoenix that the 600LT Spider seriously started to stand out even when judged against the other supercars in McLaren's current lineup. To borrow a well-worn phrase, the McLaren 600LT Spider is more than the sum of its parts. It was designed in such a way that all of its bits and pieces harmoniously work together to create what may be the single best buy in the entire supercar realm. McLaren divides its street cars into three categories: Sport Series, Super Series, and Ultimate Series. The LT designation, which stands for Longtail and memorializes the collectible F1 Longtail of the 1990s, is affixed to higher-end, track-focused machinery. The 600LT sits at the very top of the brand's entry level series, and while that seemingly means it's merely the biggest and baddest of the lowest tier, that isn't a fair assessment. I suggest you read through our First Drive report of the hardtop 600LT to understand why we at Autoblog concluded at the time that "it's quite simply the most entertaining model McLaren has yet built." Now that we've driven the 600LT Spider, however, we might have to adjust our rankings. Unlike some supercar makers, McLaren prides itself on building vehicles that aren't just fast around a racetrack but are somehow also easy to live with and drive out in the real world. That dual-role nature lends itself extremely well to top-down motoring. And McLaren has nailed the folding hardtop design with the 600LT Spider. With the top up, the McLaren 600LT Spider feels just like the coupe. The electrically powered roof is composed of three pieces that can raise or lower in less than 20 seconds and can be activated at up to 25 mph. At speed, the hardtop does a good job of keeping the cabin relatively quiet, and conversations can easily be had on the highway. Top down, there's less wind buffeting and a greater feeling of spaciousness than in the Lamborghini Huracan Spyder.

Road-legal McLaren P1 GTR in the works

When the McLaren F1 won the 24 Hours of Le Mans on its first try, it was the car run by Lanzante Motorsport that took the victory. The English firm has maintained a two-decade relationship with McLaren, often through work on the F1, and it will now turn its attention to the P1 GTR by making the 986-horsepower track-only supercar road-legal for certain customers. What needs to be done for the conversion, how long it takes, and the specs of the finished product will be determined by where in the world the owner plans to use the car, so Lanzante is taking each order "on a case-by-case basis." But the company has said that the finished product will always maintain its positioning compared to the currently road-legal P1, by being more powerful, faster, and having more aggressive aerodynamics. The first donor car should hit the operating lift later this year. McLaren isn't officially involved in the project, but speculation is that the Woking carmaker and its MSO division will be there to assist in order to make sure all goes well.

Struggling McLaren-Honda F1 partners near 'fork in the road'

WOKING, England - McLaren's partnership with Honda has not worked so far, and the team is now approaching a "fork in the road," executive director Zak Brown said on Wednesday. Speaking to Reuters in his office at the Formula One team's headquarters, Brown (pictured above) indicated clearly that a parting of the ways was a real option under consideration by management. The American said engine upgrades promised for this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix were not ready, and the Japanese manufacturer could not say when they might be. And while McLaren still wanted to win championships with Honda, there were serious concerns as to whether that was achievable. "Honda's working very hard, but they seem a bit lost," said Brown, who replaced Ron Dennis at the helm late last year. "We were only told recently that we wouldn't have the upgrade coming (for Montreal) ... and we don't have a definitive timeline, which is concerning because the pain is great and we can't sit around forever. "We were eagerly awaiting this upgrade as were our drivers, and it's a big disappointment that it's not coming. It's not lack of effort, but they are struggling to get it to come together."FAILURE AND EMBARRASSMENT McLaren, the second oldest and most successful team in Formula One after Ferrari in terms of race wins, are the only ones yet to score a point this season. They have not won a race since 2012. The renewed partnership with Honda in 2015 was billed as a return to the glory days, when French great Alain Prost and the late Brazilian Ayrton Senna dominated the late 1980s and early 1990s. Instead it has brought failure and embarrassment to the former world champions, whose cars have failed to finish races -- and sometimes even start them -- due to engine failures. Spanish driver Fernando Alonso, a double world champion whose future is uncertain, said in March that "we have only one problem, and that is the power unit. There is no reliability and there is no power." Honda's engine troubles even plagued Alonso at the Indy 500, where a failure took him out of the race. McLaren were ninth in 2015, sixth last year and this season could become their worst ever. MARCHING ORDERS "The executive committee have now given us our marching orders," said Brown, who is also chairman of the fast-growing Motorsport Network media group. "We're not going to go into another year like this, in hope." "I don't want to get into what our options are.