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McLaren opening four new dealerships in America

McLaren is opening four new dealerships in the United States. The addition of the new locations bring the company's North American presence up to 22 showrooms, and its global dealer network up to 80. And they're opening just in time for the arrival of the manufacturer's new and (relatively) more accessible Sports Series. The new dealerships are located in Boston, Houston, Palm Beach, and Bergen County, NJ. McLaren Boston will open as part of the Village Automotive Group, adjacent to its existing Audi and Porsche showrooms on Pond Street in Norwell, MA. McLaren Houston will be a stand-alone showroom being opened by Park Place, a network principally centered around the Dallas area with dealerships selling exotic machinery from the likes of Bentley, Bugatti, Lotus, Maserati, Porsche, and Rolls-Royce. McLaren Palm Beach will join the Myers Auto Group alongside its Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin franchises on South Dixie Highway. And finally McLaren Bergen County will form part of the Prestige Family of Fine Cars, with its Lamborghini, Jaguar, and other brands currently located in Paramus while the new showroom is built in Ramsey, NJ. These join the existing locations in Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Calabasas (LA), Chicago, Dallas, Long Island, Miami, Newport Beach, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Tampa Bay, as well as Rancho Mirage, CA, Scottsdale, AZ, Greenwich, CT, and Washington, DC. Vancouver and Toronto have McLaren dealers as well, as does Mexico City (though that's counted together with the showroom in Chile in the Latin America region). By comparison, Aston Martin has 37 dealers in the United States (and five in Canada). Lamborghini has 31 in the US (plus four in Canada) out of its 130+ worldwide. And Ferrari has 38 in the US (and five in Canada) out of its approximately 200 locations around the world. The expansion of McLaren's dealer network coincides with the arrival of the new Sports Series - represented here by the 570S – which promises to open a whole new market segment for the British automaker. Priced below anything Ferrari or Lamborghini can offer, the 570S takes aim at the Audi R8 and Porsche 911 Turbo. Its launch stands to increase McLaren's sales drastically in the coming years: last year the company delivered a record 1,654, but with the introduction of the Sports Series, it aims to increase that number to 4,000 annually by the end of next year.

2016 McLaren 650S Spider Review [w/video]

All I saw was a cloud of dust. At some point during my 575-mile drive of the 2016 McLaren 650S Spider, I sort of became immune to gawkers. Phones snapped hundreds of pictures and videos, so I imagine I'm semi-famous on exactly 200,000 different Twitstagram accounts by now. But then a kid so intent on capturing my green machine actually drove off the road. Thankfully, he regained control, and in the process was hopefully taught a very important lesson about distracted driving. Probably not. That's what happens when you drive a bright green McLaren through the heartland of America: everyone takes notice. Car enthusiasts or not, every single person I passed in the 650S gave it a second look. Usually they just stared and stared. Or honked. Or tried to race me (and lost – dummies). My road trip was a 575-mile-long case of distracted driving, and all I can say is, "sorry, not sorry." It all started over dinner in New York. I told our McLaren guy that he should send a car to Detroit, and instead of hiring a transportation company, should just let me drive it over. Next thing I knew, I was on a plane to Baltimore with intrepid video producer Chris "Roy Rogers" McGraw, where a $350,000-plus, Mantis Green 650S Spider would be waiting for me by the BWI airport rental car plaza. McLaren cars enter the US through the Port of Baltimore, so it felt right picking up the car there, instead of in New York. Plus, driving this thing through Manhattan seemed like a massive pain in the ass. View 10 Photos No car I've ever driven could draw a crowd like the 650S. No car I've ever driven could draw a crowd like the 650S. It's not uncommon to see supercars rolling through big cities – people don't bat an eye if one drives by in Los Angeles. But in the country, it's a sight to behold. Say what you will about Mac's derivative styling, I think the 650 looks killer. And so did everyone who stopped me on the street. What I found most interesting was, just saying "McLaren" was enough to really draw people in. If they're familiar with the British marque, they haven't heard the name in a really long time. And if the word doesn't ring a bell, they want to know what it's all about. "It's not a Ferrari – it's a McLaren," one guy said to his wife at a rest stop. The brand recognition might still be lower than McLaren would like – everyone instantly thinks it's a Ferrari or Lamborghini – but everyone I met took this car very, very seriously. And you have to take it seriously.

The story behind the Bruce Meyers racecar bed

It must have been quite a spectacle to watch as a full-size vehicle trailer pulled up in front of the Schorrs' suburban house and delivered a garish French Racing Blue sports car. But it might not have been all that odd. "My world was the car world, and my dad was the car guy," Stuart Schorr, now Jaguar Land Rover communications chief, recalls of his youth. His father Marty was the editor in chief of high performance car magazines during the muscle-car era of the '60s and '70s. "I was the only kid who had a Plymouth Superbird parked in the driveway, who got driven to school in a hot-rodded Corvette." Yet this vehicle was extraordinary, even by Schorr standards. Made of thick fiberglass, with four-spoke mags and racing slicks, it looked like a McLaren M6 Can-Am racer – wide, voluptuous, and impossibly low. But in place of niceties like the front intake, cockpit, and engine, it had a broad cutout the size and shape of a coffin. Also, it unbolted in the middle lengthwise. Workers hauled it into the house, one piece at a time, through the window, and bolted it together in Stuart's bedroom, finishing with a full-size twin mattress. "When Stuart came home from school, he found the McLaren bed in his room," Marty Schorr says. "I'm pretty sure he slept in that bed until he went away to college." (This may have been the most unusually effective form of teen birth control. "No female ever saw that bed," Stuart confesses.) One of the great mysteries of the bed was its provenance. "If you looked under the plastic tires, it had these stickers that said B.F. Meyers & Company." This was the imprint of Bruce Meyers, creator of the Meyers Manx: the flippant fiberglass wonder that ushered in – and was then summarily ushered out of – the Volkswagen dune buggy conversion market. Did Bruce Meyers build a kids' bed? And, if so, why? Bruce Meyers grew up near the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, surfing and diving illegally off the piers. "That's the kind of life I led as a boy," he says during an extensive interview. "It was one with a lot of intolerance for rules." A thorough iconoclast, he attended art school. He spent time sailing. He lived on a coral atoll in the South Seas and ran a pearl trading post. And then he returned to Southern California and worked in a shipyard. "Boat building at that time was moving over from wooden to fiberglass construction.