If You Ever Accidentally Drive Off a Cliff, Better Hope It’s in a McLaren!
When a journalist drove off of a hillside in a McLaren 570S Spider, he thought he was about to die. Instead, he learned just how well built the car actually is.
California truly has some spectacular roads with just as spectacular views. Route 33 is one of them and winds its way through the middle of the Los Padres National Forest up a summit at 5,100 feet and back down again to meet with route 166. It’s a road that has claimed lives regularly, as falling off the road often means a steep drop off the side of the mountain. In a jaw-dropping piece for Men’s Health, auto journalist
Evans wasn’t actually driving the 570S Spider at the point it departed the road. He was the passenger and sharing the car with another media figure he had never met before, which is not uncommon on press events in the industry. In this case, according to Evans, he swapped driving duties with the “eager twenty-something kid from England” just five minutes before they went off the edge.
We highly recommend reading the full Men’s Health article here, because Evans describes the death-defying experience in vivid, superbly-written detail. What’s incredible is that after the journey of 70 feet down the mountain in an open-topped car, they both survived unharmed. What’s just as eye-opening is the McLaren engineer he spoke to not long after the crash. He appears unsurprised that they survived the crash, saying: “There’s a one-piece carbon-fiber safety cell under here … This MonoCell is virtually bombproof. You’ll survive just about anything in a McLaren.”
It truly is a testament to McLaren’s crash testing that Evan’s is able to write about his experience. According to the engineer, they take the responsibility of building powerful performance cars seriously and account for bad things happening. Or, as the engineer actually puts it, “Especially, for example, when enthusiasm overcomes adhesion and a high-energy crash results.”
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