#570s

There are swaths of London that are famous for drawing in the most ostentatious supercars in existence, often with one of them pin-balling itself down a row of parked cars in a high-end neighborhood. This is especially true in the summer months, when foreign business magnates seeking milder climates unleash their children onto the city. Someone even produced a documentary about it a few years back — Millionaire Boy Racers — that pitted stodgy Londoners with furrowed brows against young hooligans in six-figure cars.

The real gift arising from the situation is the large number of non-serious crashes involving those ultra-premium rides that the drivers did nothing to achieve. For example, just last week a pink McLaren 570S managed to demolish itself in a 20-mph zone near Montagu Mansions. While we cannot say it was another millionaire boy racer, the fuchsia paint scheme would certainly suggest so.

In the middle of a desert, a fleet of gorgeous supercars sat patiently, awaiting the next slightly hungover bachelor party, or group of corporate khaki-wearers. Yet, I could feel the unmistakable sense of power as I arrived at Exotics Racing in Las Vegas. These beasts waited to be unchained by a capable driver.

Exotics Racing is the brainchild of stunt driver and former Euro NASCAR champion Romain Thievin.

“I started with almost nothing,” says Thievin. “And now, I own over 50 exotic cars.”

With locations outside of Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Exotics Racing is the perfect place for pleated Dockers-wearing cubicle dwellers to have team-building events. Thievin’s fleet includes everything from Lamborghini Huracans to Audi R8s to Porsche 991 GT3s. But when I called Exotics Racing to let them know I was in town, Thievin and his team insisted that I drive the latest addition to their impressive fleet.

Behold, the McLaren 570S.

The new McLaren 570S

It sounds funny to say a car that costs almost $185,000 is a move downmarket, but the new McLaren 570S introduced at the recent New York Auto Show, and the detuned 540S version of the same “Sport Series” chassis (~$150K), are exactly that. The first McLarens to cost less than a quarter of a million dollars are aimed squarely at the Porsche 911. Since I’ve always been a best bang for the buck kind of a guy, whether I’m talking cars or stereo equipment, I wondered if McLaren might be interested in using their resources to bring their kind of high performance to an everyman’s sports car. So I asked Wayne Bruce, McLaren’s global director of communications, if there might be a sub-six-figure McLaren some day.