McLaren MP4-12C | Spotted
Is it just us, or has the first car built by McLaren Automotive finally come into its own?
The MP4-12C is one of those cars that tends to split opinions. Some of this split is to do with its place in history: it was first, and therefore imperfect, and people held its imperfections against it. But the first guy through the wall always gets bloody; McLaren learned its lessons on the fly. The rest of the naysayers tend to think (or have heard secondhand) that the car is fundamentally unreliable and very expensive to fix. Clearly, there is no smoke without some fire in either regard, but generally speaking, the 12C is considered within the acknowledged margins for an exotically engineered, mid-engined supercar. Is it cheap to run? No.
Is it cheap to buy? Well, it has certainly rebounded from a period where it seemed like prices might dip under £70k and keep descending. Now the good ones have stabilised and even begun to gently appreciate. As ever, there are a number of factors at play there, not least heightened demand based on the realisation of just how much supercar you’re getting for the money - but also (much like other direct rivals from its era) there is likely a growing appreciation for the kind of analogue appeal that high-end manufacturers have been forced to walk away from.
It also does the 12C no harm that its design, once chastised for being too anodyne, appears now to have delivered that rare thing: a straightforwardly good-looking car. One well-sized for UK roads, too. Moreover, this 2014 example in McLaren Orange (what else?) arguably represents the sweet spot in 12C development. By this point, McLaren had addressed early niggles and boosted its output from the twin-turbo 3.8-litre V8 to 625hp – good for 0-62mph in just 3.1 seconds and a top speed of 207mph. In short, no supercar built since is ever going to embarrass you in a straight line.
And not in the corners either. McLaren may have significantly improved on the 12C’s hydraulically actuated ProActive Chassis Control system, but its combination of superlative body control with beguiling ride quality remains familiar and established many of the hallmarks of the brand - as did the steering. While it’s also true that the car didn’t slide with the nonchalant elan of a Ferrari 458, it did pretty much everything you could ask of it up to that point, and in sufficient quantities for you to never question where all your money had gone.
The amount of money asked for this one is £74,995, befitting an almost blemish-free MOT record and service history, if not perhaps the 43k accrued on the odometer. That said, unless you’re looking for a 12C to complete a museum-grade McLaren collection, it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to garage queen status - better, surely, to buy one that has been used and consistently attended to for the past decade. This one is said to have all its stamps and is clearly well-known to the vendor. The spec looks decent, too.
So is now a good time to buy? Perhaps. That you’ll save around £35k compared with a similarly well-used 458 will come as a shock to precisely no one, just as you won’t need reminding that a 12C delivers considerably more bang-per-buck than a slightly newer, high-spec 991 would for the same money. Both those things have been true for what seems like forever. But it’s also perfectly plausible that, a decade on from its demise, McLaren’s opening salvo - the model developed while Ron Dennis retained his iron grip on every detail and a world away from the compromises of electrification - has finally found its time to shine.
SPECIFICATION | MCLAREN MP4-12C
Engine: 3,799cc, V8 twin-turbo
Transmission: seven-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 625@7,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 442@3,000-7,000rpm
MPG: 24.1
CO2: 279g/km
First registered: 2014
Recorded mileage: 43,000 miles
Price new: £168,500
Price now: £74,995
Oustanding value, assuming nothing breaks or you have a platinum warranty.... but then same can be said of all 2nd hand supercars.
The price of these seems to have bottomoed out around £70k, with newer 570S around the same and early 720s now just over £100k, I wonder which represents better VFM as an ownership proposition.
The other that sticks in the mind was a couple of weeks at Yucca proving ground in Arizona. Repeated launch control starts to check thermal models were good was fun if nauseating. Coming alongside a GTR in Lake Havasu City felt like a perfect opportunity for a drag race against what was the only thing that was close on performance at the time but sadly the GTR driver was more sensible than me
Superb cars, not driven anything newer of that ilk so I still find it hard to imagine how good the current products are as the ride, performance and handling were all superb even on XP cars with bits of disguise and some trim issues - PPs were truly lovely. I would be scared of things going wrong but otherwise a lot of car for the money (and values seem to have been stable for a while so perhaps they will start to creep up?)
and if you were really wondering, the 720 is much faster on the road than the 12c/650 if you weren't bothered about getting locked up with the key thrown away.
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