this is a mclaren senna and it is the latest mclaren supercar following up on the p1 that went out of production a few years ago the sena has it all almost 800 horsepower a 0-60 time of less than three seconds and an all-out focus on track performance this car also costs a million dollars if you're lucky enough to buy it new the current market value is more like one and a half to two million dollars and today i'm going to review it first a little overview now like i mentioned the sena followed up on the mclaren p1 and it's the latest in mclaren's ultimate series of crazy insane supercars the sena puts up similar numbers to the p1 and both are absurdly ridiculous looking and fast and insane and expensive the senate went on sale last year and production is going to be limited to 500 units for the entire planet now powering this sena is the same four liter twin turbo v8 that mclaren also puts in the 720s but while the 720s has only 710 horsepower and 570 pound-feet the senna has around 790 horsepower and 590 pound-feet and if the extra power wasn't enough to distinguish the sena from the 720s well there's also the look the look has been controversial to say the least some people say it's ugly with that massive rear wing and this ridiculous front overhang but mclaren says it's all functional for the very best in track performance i'll look a little closer at that stuff in a second for now back to the numbers 0-60 in 2. 8 seconds a top speed of around 210 miles an hour and a current market value of somewhere between one and a half and two million dollars and today i'm going to show you all of the quirks and features of the ultimate mclaren first i'm going to take you on a tour of the car then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the senna click the link below to visit autotrader. com oversteer where i've also compiled a list of the most expensive british cars currently listed for sale on autotrader before i get started two quick thank yous for this video one is to mclaren houston where the owner of this car bought it the owner tells me mclaren houston was great when it came to ordering the car and so far for servicing it also my sincerest thanks to xpel here in san antonio who gave me this fantastic location to film this video this sena is fully wrapped in expel paint production film so nothing damages it and this car has so many weird cuts and gouges and panels that i can't imagine how long it took the expel people to wrap it anyway now on to the quirks and features all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the senate with my three very favorite quirks and that means starting with the windows now i'm not talking about these windows because you in your car have windows that look similar to these although not quite the same because this one is bisected i'll get to that instead i'm talking about these windows yes what you see down here at the bottom of the door is not just a little black panel but rather a window a lower window to complement the upper window this door has two side windows and the lower window looks at the ground so when you drive around in your center you can look through the lower window and see the lane lines on the road or a little bit of the wheel of the car next to you as you drive down the street thanks to the lower door window which is just a fantastic quirk and next up we move on to my favorite quirk number two and that would be the front compartment now i'm going to show this to you and you probably think i'm going to open up this entire thing but it doesn't open instead only this little panel here opens but there's no latch inside the car to open it so you're thinking well how do you do it do you do it with a key fob no no you kind of feel your hand up about three quarters the way up on the left you push down and then it unlatches randomly then you pull off this piece of carbon fiber and that reveals a couple of caps these are fluid caps for the steering fluid the windshield washer fluid and the transmission fluid all under this compartment here when you're done you just kind of set it back in place push back down and then it's back in place the hidden method to open the hidden compartment with the hidden fluid caps in it but my very favorite mclaren sena quirk is in between the seats that's where you see a blue canister you're thinking well what could a blue canister be doing in the interior of this car ah well you see this car is designed for race track use so what you're supposed to do with that blue canister is fill it with water then you can run a tube from the canister to your mouth and then take drinks while you're on the race track the theory being that you don't want to have to take your hand off the wheel and reach over and pick up a water bottle and distract you while you're on the track so you just have a canister and a tube to your mouth and you can drink now you or i would probably call that a water bottle with a straw mclaren refers to it as the mclaren special operations push to drink system they need mclaren's special operations to come in and give them a water bottle with a straw but that is this blue canister in between the seats now before we go any further with the quirks and features of this car we need to discuss pricing for a second i have the window sticker for this car the base price is 958 thousand dollars but the total price is just shy of 1.
1 million dollars this car has 140 000 in options and that includes basically anything and everything you can think of and it's all really expensive for example that little push to drink system is six thousand seven hundred and ten dollars extra as an option mclaren charges you six thousand seven hundred and ten dollars for a water bottle with a straw dead serious anyway i'm gonna get back to some of the other crazy options prices later but for now let's move on to the other quirks and features and that means starting with the key now you take a look at the key for this car it looks fairly standard you have three buttons on it the top one is the lock button the middle one is the mclaren logo that's the unlock button i guess you press the logo to unlock your mclaren experience but it's the bottom one that i like the most you can see it's like the front of an angry senna and if you press that the lights on the outside of the car all turn on i guess so you can find your sena in a parking lot you press that again and the lights turn off so you can just kind of tap it to turn it on and off repeatedly which i find to be very very cool now the other thing worth noting about the key is that when you turn it over you can see it's finished in carbon fiber with this little s logo for senna the cost of that 2195 dollars compared to a standard back of a key just so the rear of the key which is going to be in your pocket most of the time looks a little cooler than a normal key now next up we move on to getting into the sena specifically how you open the doors when you approach the door you can see it's like a maze of crazy cuts and gouges all over the place but there's one specific one that's under this gray panel here there's a little cutout you get your finger in there push up and there's a little rubber pad at the top you press it and then the door opens up like a supercar door should and when the door opens up you can see that the door window situation isn't done with just the ones i've already showed you there's also a window on the roof so this sena has a regular side window similar to what you'd have in your car then a window that faces the ground and then a window that faces up into the sky the door has three separate areas of windows on it which is just crazy but that's what you get if you get a setup and you spend a lot on the door window options now next up one of the first things you notice when you open the door is inside the door jam there's a little plaque right here and this is the plaque that tells you which number sena you have and unlike some car companies that just say you have one of 500 this car is individually numbered and that plaque shows precisely where you are in the senate production sequence which is a really cool thing to see next up we move inside the senate to go over the interior quirks and features of which there are very very many starting with just closing the door when you look at the door it's up you can't really see an easy place to pull it down but there is a little door pull next to the lower window you stick your hand in there pull and then the door comes down relatively easily actually it's pretty light component now once you're inside this car the first thing you really focus on is the seats this car has these one piece carbon fiber sport bucket seats that are really tight in order to keep you in place when you're going around hard corners on the racetrack apparently you can also order a wider seat if you don't fit into these that might be true for some drivers of this car because these really are narrow and grippy and tight another item with the seats that's worth noting you can see this car has regular seat belts but around the seats you can see it also has a racing harness in fact that's an option you can get a six point racing harness and the owner of this car chose to do that because he tracks it he really uses his center and so he wanted that racing harness to keep him in place on the track a lot better than a standard seat belt obviously some sena owners won't do that but it's an available option if you want to and speaking of available options the craziest thing about the seats is not how tight and grippy they are it is not the six point harness instead it's the headrest which has a little s logo on it again for senna that's an option of course it is and the cost is four thousand three hundred and ninety dollars yes that's right 43. 90 just to have a little s logo in your headrests seems a little pricey now the next interesting item worth noting with the seats is that the seats move manually you pull them forward and backwards with little levers i do that to save weight if you had power seats in this car it would just be heavier and then be a little slower on the race track now the cool thing that happens when you move the driver's seat is this center control compartment moves with the seat which is a neat idea because then it's always the same distance away from your hands and you're never reaching back or forward depending on where you have the seat positioned now if you look in this little control compartment you can see three levers on the top those are the transmission levers you have d and an r drive neutral and reverse you push them down to engage each gear that's pretty simple if you move down from the gear lever switches you have three separate buttons the top one is launch that activates launch control the next one is auto start stop because even this car has auto start stop it'll turn itself off at traffic lights to save fuel and then the bottom one is the hazard lights now you look at those buttons and you might be thinking where exactly is the engine start stop button you have the launch button in the middle they've prioritized the launch button over the engine start stop button the mark of a true sports car but how do you turn this thing on well it turns out the engine start stop button is up here on the ceiling by the rear view mirror if you want to start the car you reach in push that button and that's what turns it on now many very cool things happen when you start this car but one of the coolest is the fact that the gauge cluster automatically rises into place take a look at this it moves from its sort of sleeping position into an up position to provide you with all of the most important gauges that you need when you turn the car off the gauge cluster does the opposite it turns off and then it sort of power folds away automatically and goes back into its sleep position ready to be activated the next time you turn the car back on that is a pretty cool little trick now next up in that same vicinity of the engine start stop button on the ceiling next to the mirror you have the power window switches you can see them up there they're not on the door panel they're not in the middle they are in the ceiling in this car that's where they decided to put them and if you press them you can roll down the window except you can't really the window in this car is split into two and only the lower part rolls down it's a very very small opening as you can obviously see this is not a car you'll want to take through the drive-through because you won't be able to pass food or drinks through that little opening in the window but if you want to roll the window down in your center that's all you get and that's not the end of all the interesting items up in the ceiling area in this car another one is the door locks you press that little button and it locks the doors and you also have up there race mode now race mode is rather interesting in order to access race mode you first have to press this active button in the center control stack and that activates your ability to control which mode you're in then you press race mode you really have to confirm that you want to get into race mode you have to hold it down now once you put the car in race mode two very interesting things happen for one the gauge cluster folds itself back into its sleeping position you see at the top of the gauge cluster when it's folded down there is a little display screen that will show you only the items you most need to know like your engine revs for when you're on the race track rather than confuse and distract you with all sorts of things that you would find in the normal fully raised gauge cluster position that is a cool idea now the other thing that happens when you go into race mode is that the car lowers itself by an inch automatically to get as low to the ground as possible so it can hug the curves as tightly as it can and when it's lowering you can see it actually displays on that screen exactly how far it is lowered in millimeters and what percentage complete it is of fully lowering and getting into race mode it's kind of fun to watch that percentage climb as the car lowers itself now next up another interesting button in the ceiling area here is this little button you can see with a fan on it that button is for the climate controls if you press that button it brings up the climate controls in the infotainment screen in the center of the car and when those climate controls come up i absolutely love this diagram that allows you to direct where you want the fans to send the air it's not just a person or a seat instead it's a person with a racing helmet on because this is a track car and so you can adjust the fan location based on that diagram which is a neat little easter egg in the mclaren climate control system now next up our next interesting item in the ceiling control area here this is where the door release is to the left or to the right you have these little plastic latches if you pull it it's an electronic release the door pops open and then you kind of push the door the rest of the way and that's how you open the door to get out of the car now what if the electronic release has failed mclaren has thought of that and there is a manual release in the door jamb behind the seats on either side you can pull that and that will manually release the doors so you can get out and finally our last interesting item in the ceiling control area up here is the buttons to turn on the dome lights there's this little rubber pad you just kind of tap the light button and the dome lights turn on individually now next up moving down from this ceiling control area i want to move back to the center control stack and this active button that i mentioned before now if you press the active button like i said it allows you to enter race mode but the active button also activates the switches right above it which are the drive modes on the left you have the handling mode on the right you have powertrain and you can see they have three different settings c s and t for comfort sport and track now next up we move on to another interesting component of the senna that would be storage and specifically the fact that there is none and i mean none there's no trunk in front there's no trunk in back there's no glove box in this car there's no little net storage cubby behind the seats there is no storage at all in this thing all you get is this little center console compartment which isn't even covered and then in front of that you get another center console area where you can put stuff that is the full extent of the storage in the mclaren senna now do you see what i mean that this is really a track car now with that said it's worth noting that the key has a storage area there's this nice little leather key pouch mounted here in the middle and you can place the key there while you're driving your senna and then you can stare at the 2195 special key back that you paid extra for now one other interesting item you'll find in this car you'll notice that between the two seats behind them there is a camera and that camera is not like a dash cam instead it's part of a three camera system that is meant to record your laps so when you're on the racetrack you can turn on the camera system it will record you doing your laps then later you can watch the footage and say oh i was slow through here i didn't hit the apex here whatever this car comes with a built-in racetrack lap recording camera system if you pay extra for it of course now next up i want to move on to this which is a nice little zippered pouch that i found underneath and sort of behind the front seat now if you look at it it says on mclaren first aid kit and it also includes the warning triangle that's mandated by law that all new cars must have in some foreign countries now when you open up the first aid kit the first thing you find is this which is a rather strange piece of first aid not sure how you can save someone's life with that of course that's actually the tool to get off the center lock wheels this car doesn't have traditional lug nuts instead it has center lock wheels like a lot of high-end sports cars and race cars and you can see the area around the center lock wheel is painted red this is not standard instead this is an option and the cost for this option 3659 dollars just to paint this tiny little area red on all four wheels that's pricey but hey it does look pretty good now there's one other item of non first aid in the first aid kit and that would be this this is what i call the tool and the tool is a very important item for your sena because it gains you access to this compartment this compartment back here is where you access the oil if you want to add more check the oil level you open this compartment up but you need the tool to do it they don't let just anyone open the compartment only someone who has the tool now speaking of compartments around the back of the senna it's worth noting that you cannot open the engine cover and gain access to the engine compartment even if you own a senna instead it's like bolted down into place and you have to take it to a mclaren service center and they know where to unbolt it and pull it off so you can't really access it you can look in and see the engine but you can't get in there and start playing with stuff i guess mclaren decided it was best to leave that to the trained professionals other interesting compartments around the back of this car one is behind the driver's door there's a little compartment there that is the fuel door that's where you stick in fuel pretty simple over on the other side you have another compartment back here and i think this one is for coolant interestingly even though the door is in the same place and shaped the same way as the fuel door it opens differently you can see it opens down instead of to the side like the fuel door if you open it up and fold it down that gives you access to this cap you can unscrew it and add the fluid seems simple enough now next up still outside the car i want to move on to a discussion of its styling and specifically i want to address all of the cuts and gouges and openings and holes throughout the exterior of this car i just sent a picture of this car to a friend of mine who's not into cars and she said it was crazy looking it looked like the kind of child's toy that has a remote control and your parents accidentally step on which i think is an excellent characterization of this car it's just ridiculous looking certainly not beautiful the owner of this car fully agreed with me not a beautiful car but mclaren says all of this stuff is functional these air inlets in the front are specifically designed to direct air a certain way same with all of the other ones probably the craziest one is the little air pass-through behind the wheel and tire you can see there's a giant hole back here and what ends up happening is the tire kicks up rocks and then they end up on the bottom of the door so when you open the door rocks are always falling out every time you've driven the car but again mclaren claims this is functional and they say the same thing about the rear wing which is truly massive the largest rear wing i think i've ever seen on any car it just looks absolutely crazy insane but again they say this is all functional to provide downforce that helps keep the car on the ground tight on the racetrack when you're driving along mclaren says all of this stuff adds up to almost 1800 pounds of downforce which is a huge number and really important for racetrack driving and theoretically that's why the car looks like this and next up let's talk about the wing because it is really a marvel of this car it is absolutely huge and its sole goal is not to provide downforce that's not the only thing that it does under hard braking the wing will also rotate almost 90 degrees to add more drag and help the car slow down faster and apparently it works well this car's brakes are absolutely insane if you look at the numbers this thing has a similar zero to 60 top speed is the mclaren p1 but it breaks way way faster and obviously the wing is a component in that but nonetheless it is just absolutely huge one of the largest wings you will ever see on any production car even larger than a lot of the wings on a lot of race cars now since i'm on the subject of the wing there are two rather interesting options that go along with the wing in this car underneath the wing you can see that it's painted blue and you also have ayrton senna's signature under there the cost to do that six thousand six hundred and seventy three dollars to put it underneath the wing which no one will ever see except when it tilts up in hard breaking you also have the little s logos on the side of the wing again for senna the cost to add those 4 390 just to put a couple of logos at the end of the wing although once again i must admit it looks very very cool and next up well first off just look at the car from this angle and tell me this doesn't look like one of the craziest looking cars you have ever seen in your life it's an insane angle on this car but anyway next up a few items around back worth noting one is the roof scoop just like the mclaren f1 and the p1 there's a little roof scoop that goes over the roof and sucks in air that way which is kind of cool you also have in the middle here on the back the exhausts which are up on the top instead of on the bottom like most other cars i love cars where the exhaust takes precedence over the license plate these are the cars that really know what matters and of course in addition to just looking cool the exhaust also sounds amazing take a listen and another very cool item in the back of this car is the brake lights and turn signals they share this very thin clear strip first take a look at what it looks like with it off you can't even really tell this thing has brake lights or turn signals and now with it on they're very bright actually and they show up really well but it's this tiny little hidden strip integrated into the back of the car i think it looks really really neat and next up moving on to the lighting in the front of the car it doesn't quite look as good as it does in back you have the turn signals which stick way out kind of projecting forward and then the headlights are actually further back more integrated into the body and that just serves to underscore what i think is this car's biggest styling problem which is this massive front overhang it really is amazing how far this car continues in front after the front wheels stop usually performance cars have very small overhangs to minimize like excessive bodywork that sort of thing this just goes and goes and goes and once again i'm sure there's a functional purpose for it but it does look a little bit unusual especially compared to most other performance and sports cars and finally moving back into the center i want to talk about some of the screen technology in this car now i already showed you the folding gauge cluster screen and i showed you some of these screens more in depth in my review of the mclaren 720s which shares fairly similar systems with the sena i will link that in the description below but there are some additional cool features that i found in this car and i want to start with the backup camera now you put the car in reverse the backup camera comes on in the gauge cluster and it is surprisingly good good resolution big wide screen and it actually shows where you're backing up it's pretty good which is nice in a car like this because visibility is pretty bad and if you bump into something it'll be expensive now next up there's also a feature in here called track telemetry if you go in here you can enter your favorite track and then record your lap times and then every time you get back out on the track you can compare how your laps did versus prior laps which is a cool feature you can see this has already been filled out because the owner of this car has already taken it on the racetrack at circuit of the americas in austin he plans to track this thing which is how it was intended to be used i respect that a lot now one other interesting thing in track telemetry you can select the weather of your particular track day and the theory here is obviously if it's wet you're going to be slower and so when you go to compare lap times later you can say oh well that one was wet and that's why it's slower whatever the funny thing though is in the weather section they give you the option of snowy so if you ever take your center to the track on a snowy day you can enter a snowy lap into the system i also like the fact that there are separate options for cloudy and overcast only the british would distinguish between cloudy and overcast you know it's looking rather cloudy today no no i believe it's overcast and so you have those two choices of course neither of which really matter if you're out on the racetrack and so that's a comprehensive tour of the quirks and features of the mclaren senna now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the seda this is this is quite something your first impression is just how crazy these door window things are looking down it's just first off you're scared because you're so close to the road obviously this is how all of these cars are these low supercars but now you see it and it's scary this is this is quite impressive i uh i don't know that i've ever been in a road car before where the interior was just so nuts where i mean there's nothing about this interior that's even one-tenth normal the door windows the crazy windows here everything above you around you the wing and bat everything looks insane it really feels like the craziest thing that i have sat inside oh backhand came out a little there i guess we gotta warm up the tires i can't believe i can look out and see the road and these door windows are so ridiculous and everything about this is a totally insane experience compared to any other car it just looks crazier i've been in a lot of super cars nothing has ever felt as insane inside as this with the door windows and you see the blue hydraulic and you're being hugged by the seat you've got the motor behind you and it's like what is happening the sound is oh my god oh okay well then to arise the fine people of san antonio enough for the day the sensation of speed in this car is one of the craziest of any cars that i've ever felt simply because the door windows the lowness to the ground the sound what is this thing it just feels so dirty the thing is i know it's a really valuable car but i feel so confident driving it that i don't feel as though you know i'm in danger of messing anything up i don't feel like the wrong move could send it into a guardrail one thing the owner told me is that people kind of react like what is this crazy thing and that is certainly something i'm finding you know not that many people know not that many people know yet what this car is but you see the wing you see the look and it doesn't matter if you know or not you know it's insane that's all you need to know people see it and they're like what is this crazy thing i'm surprised at the fact that it can get a little squirrely the tires spin a little it's just an enormous amount of power i guess i'm actually interested in driving it a little bit on regular streets as i am now just because what's that like i mean a lot of people have talked about how this car is on the track what's it like on the road and the answer is so far really harsh ride really really really really really harsh ride even the little lane line bumps you're like oh you drive by people and they just look at it like you're batman which effectively you are and the steering is just incredible it's so so sharp so good the owner of this car is very serious about tracking in fact he told me he's never driven it on the street before he's only trailered it to track events um and so i'm doing some of the first street miles in this car and i will say it doesn't belong here but it's still so exciting to drive it here you know you kind of see this thing and you see the specs and i was thinking oh another mclaren you know the same motor is a 720s is it really going to be that different well the answer is it's just on another level of crazy one that you can't stop smiling when you drive this car looking at the door windows and the whole thing and feeling it and hearing it but also uh you can't stop worrying about the value certainly but it really is incredible it really does feel like a special and unusual and exciting car um definitely more than 720s that car already has a crazy sense of occasion this thing is is somehow even beyond that and i i just love it and so that's the mclaren senna this really is an amazing vehicle and a worthy supercar in mclaren's ultimate series of its flagship and premiere cars it's also one of the craziest and most expensive cars on the road today as for the styling well it ain't beautiful but it's certainly distinctive and i've kind of come to appreciate how bold and daring and ridiculous it really is and that 2. 8 second 0-60 time certainly helps anyway now it's time to give the senna a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling this is probably the hardest category of all to rate the sena is not gorgeous not even really attractive but it's functional eye-catching and very cool i spent a lot of time on this and i gave it a 7 out of 10 which is the lowest of any supercar i've tested next up is acceleration does 0-60 in 2.
8 seconds and it gets a 10 out of 10. handling is tremendously excellent and it gets a 10 out of 10. fun factor the car is so insanely fun and thrilling it easily gets a 10 out of 10.
cool factor is also really really high this is one of the coolest new supercars if not the coolest and it gets a 10 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 47 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features the senate is reasonably well equipped especially with technology and it gets a six out of ten comfort the senate has a really rough ride although that's by design and it gets a two out of ten quality is decent materials are great and it loses out only in potential reliability troubles then it gets an 8 out of 10. practicality is pretty much non-existent and it gets a 1 out of 10.
finally value and it's gone way up in value more than the 918 spider not as much as the agera rs but it's also way cheaper to buy it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total daily score of 24 out of 50.
