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Another 650S Spider daily driver

To be honest, it's the Ferrari which makes the whole situation worse. It's ancient - almost as old as me (I may be lying about my age a tad there though......), ~35k miles etc. etc. - and doesn't have any of these issues.

Admittedly, it's a tad more simple - but I'm pretty sure Ferrari would be able to fold a mirror out!
 
I've been following your thread with interest on PH. I work as an ARDS circuit instructor and regularly work with Supercar experience days, recently I was working with a 570s at one of these days. During the event we were unable to open the passenger door from outside or inside using the switch, we had to pull the emergency release cord, the key was not recognised by the car unless you waved it next to the dash and the car had a problem with the fuel tank valve which resulted in it taking approx 15 mins to refuel the tank. These issues plus the depreciation are hitting McLaren values hard, I know somebody who recently bought a 570S, he paid £90K for an 18 month old car that cost the original owner £189K, so it depreciated nearly £100k in 18 months ! They are amazing cars to drive, suspension on the 570s is superb and they are very quick, I own a 458 and it is definitely faster and better handling than my 458 but the depreciation and problems that seem to occur on a large proportion of McLarens will see me sticking to the Prancing Horse for the foreseeable future.
 
Dave, its a shame to hear of the list of woes. Sounds like they have their share of "Friday afternoon" cars, which isn't on given the price point. I hope McLaren mange to sort them out for you and you can get back to enjoying the car! (I look forward to the video of doughnuts in the snow :laugh:) Hopefully the dealer service experience softens the little niggles?

As an aside, I'm amused by the keys not being recognised, switches not working (TVR?). Latest TV adds have people opening their cars with their phones...as my phone is "somewhere" and when I do have it is often out of battery I wonder what would happen :laugh: Personally I prefer locks that can be operated with a screw driver or coat hanger :thumbsup:
 
The key not found issue isn't one I've suffered from - which is bizarre, since I think it's a far more common problem than the ones I've been having! I think it's only happened to me one single time.

The dealer isn't winning any prizes really. I mailed them early yesterday morning - making it very clear that I was extremely unhappy with the car, and wanted them to tell me when I could bring it in - and when I finally gave up waiting for them and called them early afternoon, the service woman hadn't even read the email.

It's booked in for Tuesday now - let's see how it goes....... I suppose the only positive is that they did stop the roof leaking, and they did stop the suspension warnings by topping the fluid up. On the other hand, I've got more failures now than when that was happening.
 
One of the positives about buying a McLaren is - despite the crashing depreciation, and the questionable build quality (some cars seem perfect, others less so) - is that the comprehensive warranty takes care of everything.

Except it doesn't.

Two weeks ago, my climate system started behaving randomly. It did get better by the time I dropped it at McLaren last week - only the heated rear window was failing to switch on whereas a week previously everything was switching itself on / off and I couldn't change it.

The cause is apparently that water has got into the climate control module (the climate control is on the drivers door). And water ingress is not covered by the warranty.

If the battery gets low, the McLarens drop the windows so it's still possible to open the doors. This has never happened in my ownership - I use the car most days, and it goes on the charger when I don't. The battery has never been below 90%.
But McLaren (Ascot) are claiming that this is the likely cause - and hence it will cost me £1,325 to have the module replaced.

I have sent them a mail disputing this - either the ingress had already occurred when I purchased the car, in which case CRA 2015 protects me - or the car is leaking and allowing water into the interior (which again, would almost certainly have been the case when I bought the car - only 12 weeks before I reported this problem).

Car needs servicing in a couple of weeks, and whilst that was an expected cost - adding the climate unit onto the service + tyres I put on last week means my car will be swallowing > £3k in a month. Which isn't really something I'd budgeted for with my very expensive warranty - especially if they're likely to find other faults the warranty doesn't cover when they service it.

My McLaren ownership experience isn't feeling very positive right now.......
 
As I was reading the above I was thinking...CRA.

Perfectly reasonable to expect a vehicle to be designed in such a way as to prohibit the ingress of water into electrical components. Its a basic engineering standard; Ingress Protection (IP).

And with regards to the windows dropping...give me a break what a bone head design feature! Again I would argue its perfectly reasonable to assume a car remains watertight, full stop and also in this case that all electrical components remain watertight through all configurations instigated by the car itself. If you left the window down and it rained, your problem, but if the car decides to do it as a "design feature" then I would say its reasonable to expect the car manufacturer to ensure that all electrical components that can get wet are suitably protected.

Be interesting to know if the dealer briefed you on this "design feature". If they didn't, you have another strong argument!

For those people that take their cars on tour and thus don't have a garage for 1-2 weeks, do they sell/ advise you to take a waterproof tarp in case this happens whilst you wait for the breakdown people?

I'm always, I was going to say "surprised", but it should be "disappointed", in some of the piss poor engineering that still occurs, particularly when there is no reason for it other than lack of thought.

I hope it gets resolved with little hassle! (Maybe you should hang onto the 360 for just a little longer:hmmm:)
 
Thought I'd give an update, since the ownership has got a lot more positive in recent months.

McLaren Ascot (sales) did agree to swallow the cost of the climate unit as goodwill. While we were discussing the fact that they should be doing this, I stated that the most likely reason water had damaged the climate unit was a leaking seal - and that they MUST check that's not the cause. I was told that they had checked, but would check again.

Got the car back with working climate, and went to a PH meet. Not long after getting there it rained quite hard - once it stopped, I went back to the car to put my sunglasses away. What did I find on the climate controls in the door? Water drops........

Straight back to McLaren where they apologised profusely, and replaced a seal. Initially, it still seemed to let a little water in - but this stopped after a few days, and the car then seemed water tight.

Since mid-December, the car has actually been pretty well behaved. The windows can be a little random occasionally (they'll go all the way up, then drop to halfway) - but it's rare and not something I expect them to fix when it hardly ever happens. Apart from that - it's pretty much fault free - even stuff they haven't fixed (e.g. drivers mirror failing to fold out properly occasionally) doesn't seem to happen anymore. Owning the car has been a lot more fun when it "works".

A few weeks ago, I got the alignment done - and although it still takes a LOT more initial turning of the wheel than the 360 does on the same bend, it has sharpened up the handling and it feels like there is a lot more front end grip.

On the way back from the alignment I stopped at Ascot, because I was not happy with the paint. In bright sunlight, it's perfect - but in less than bright sunlight the bonnet looks darker than the wings. There are a couple of other panels where there is a very slight difference in shade - not as noticeable, but once you've noticed it..... Ascot say that the car has had no paintwork under warranty, and that they did no paint as pre-sales prep.
However - within a couple of days, McLaren Client services said that they will cover the cost of the car being painted. I don't believe they are going to do the entire car - but I have been assured it will come back as a single colour and will be perfect. It's actually very common for McLarens to need panels painted - manufacturing problems mean they suffer from bubbling - so the paint shops are very familiar with matching the colours! I think that at the very least, my entire front end + LHS of the car + engine lid is being done (and probably the front roof panel too). I think this is entirely down to fading which is a bit worrying - I've been told that the formulation of the volcano colour paints changed and the earlier cars (which I suspect my 2014 one counts as) are more prone to fading.

Since the car will be perfect once it comes back - and the stone chips it's got in the last 6 months will have gone - I'm 95% sure I'm going to get PPF over the entire car once it's painted. The 5% doubt is because it's damn expensive!

Car will be off the road for most of March while it's painted - which is particularly bad timing, because the Ferrari needs servicing in March too - and will probably then go up for sale.
 
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