MCLAREN MP4 120

This is 'Job One', the first production-spec McLaren MP4-12C. We drive the car that changed the supercar landscape forever

- by JAMES TAYLOR

IT'S STILL QUICK. TRULY, BREATHTAKINGLY quick. With turbo-spooled fire in its belly and a semi-active-suspension magic carpet beneath its body, the McLaren MP4-12C doesn't so much drive down the road as teleport from one bit of it to the next. We're on a slightly dilapidated ribbon of B-road loosely draped over some of the steeper bits of the Peak District. I've driven this road at various times in various cars, but in the McLaren it's as though all the straights have been taken out. I suppose 616bhp and a sub nine-second 0-120mph time will do that. It's also like driving it with most of the bumps taken out. The 12C's innovative suspension smooths the ripples and corrugations, yet also steadfastly resists body roll. It's a pretty singular experience today; 14 years ago, it must have felt revolutionary.

In more ways than one: the 12C wasn't just a new kind of supercar but a new entry from a new manufacturer. A new manufacturer with a decades-long history, notwithstanding. There'd been two McLaren road cars before: the Bruce McLaren/Gordon Coppuck-designed M6GT in the late 1960s (of which three prototypes were built), and the Gordon Murray F1 launched in 1993, built under the McLaren Cars banner. But the MP4-12C was part of a new enterprise: McLaren Automotive.