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2016 McLaren 570S Coupe First Drive

The difference between a sports car and a supercar is lost on the Portuguese gentleman standing on the roadside. I've stopped in my attempts to flood the country air with V8 ruckus for the moment, and am parked on the shoulder, taking a breather when he approaches. My Portuguese is limited to bom dia and obrigado, and he's not saying anything in English, but his wide smile, rotating pointer finger, and ready iPhone are symbols that transcend language: "Please gun it." Fresh off some 75 miles of strappy pavement between hot laps at the Portimao circuit and my hotel, behind the wheel of McLaren's bouncing new baby, the 570S Coupe, I'm more than happy to oblige. The British company has hammered home that the 570S, the first of its Sports Series cars and the most accessible driving tool in its new range, is a sports car. That is; not a member of the unearthly Ultimate Series a la the P1, or a meat-and-potatoes supercar like the 650S from the Super Series. The guy with the phone held aloft couldn't care less about those delineations. I pull out into the street, offer my friend a few red-blooded throttle blips, and then give the cobblestones a footful of hell. The 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 makes a symphony's worth of sucking, blowing, whistling, and exploding noises behind my head, and the world again makes a blurry kind of sense. It's a stunner, even before the trick dihedral doors float up and drive the crowd wild. If you're McLaren, whose best-known current model may be the $1-million-plus, 900-plus-horsepower P1 everythingcar, it makes sense that you might want to sandbag a bit when it comes to your entry-level model. But for all that it may compete with the almost-commonplace Porsche 911 Turbo S and the Audi R8 – in terms of performance and price – the 570S reads as "supercar" to most of the world. Even stripped of the McLaren Orange or Mantis Green the brand's vehicles are so often photographed in, my Vermillion Red test car looks like the proverbial million bucks. The elliptical roofline, wheels at extreme corners, and short sloping front end telegraphs the mid-engine orientation. And anyone that's halfway familiar with the brand won't miss the signature-shape of the headlamps, and charismatic vent work on the sides of the body. It's a stunner, even before the trick dihedral doors float up and drive the crowd wild. Inside things are equally well conceived, and still subtler.

The 2022 McLaren F1 car can be yours, in Lego form

The hits at Lego keep on coming. Their latest kit is a McLaren MCL36, the team's 2022 Formula One car. Joining the Technic line for more advanced (read: adult) builders, the 1,432-piece set looks extremely faithful to the real thing, complete with the team's all-new livery. Lego worked closely with McLaren Racing to bring the car to life. This should be no surprise, as Lego has already turned several McLaren cars into brick form. The toy designers developed the kit in conjunction with the real F1 shop to have the Lego set released at the same time as the actual MCL36. In fact, McLaren Racing's new orange-on-blue livery may have even been accidentally revealed by the Lego set before it was seen on the real car. The graphic scheme isn't all it has in common with the 1:1 scale car. The Lego replica features a V6 engine with moving pistons, working suspension, a steering mechanism that turns the front wheels, and a functioning differential. When all is said and done, the finished car will measure 25.5 inches long, 10.5 inches wide, and over 5 inches tall. One of the reasons the kit pulls off its real counterpart's look so well is that F1 cars by nature are very utilitarian. They don't have wide, sweeping panels with curved sheetmetal like production cars, which are incredibly difficult to replicate with Lego. The gaps in the bodywork simply don't look as egregious as they do on, say, the Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS. The McLaren MCL36 follows several recent Technic releases, including the Ford Raptor, Jeep Wrangler, and Batmobile from the upcoming "The Batman" movie. The Formula One car is scheduled for a March 1 release and will retail for $179.99. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

McLaren uses 20-year-old laptops on its first supercar

You've no doubt heard of organizations clinging to ancient technology to keep their businesses running, but probably nothing like this. A Jalopnik tour has shown that McLaren relies on a roughly 20-year-old laptop, a variant of Compaq's LTE 5280, to maintain its classic F1 supercar. Simply put, the automaker made the mistake of chaining itself to very specific technology: it needs a custom card in the computer to interface with the F1 and find out what's wrong. That's crucial to buyers who may have spent millions and would rather not see their vehicular pride and joy become a giant paperweight. The good news is that McLaren won't have to search auction sites and garage sales for decades-old tech. It's working on an updated interface that will work with PCs released this century, so you should see F1s on the roads for years to come. Let's just hope that the company's newer rides are a little more future-proof – you don't want a beast like the P1 to have a limited shelf life because of its diagnostic tools. Related Video: This article by Jon Fingas originally ran on Engadget, the definitive guide to this connected life. Image Credit: © DBURKE / Alamy Auto News Weird Car News McLaren Auto Repair Maintenance Technology Coupe Performance Supercars F1 supercar transportation gear vehicle laptop