Now THIS is my kind of party....

I've been invited to a attend special event with McLaren Automobiles to do some hot laps with their professional race team drivers and then take the new 650S out myself on Nov 6th at Summit Point Raceway. They are flying both the cars and their race team over from England and at 650 HP in a 3,000 lb car, it will be - by far - the fastest, most capable car I have ever driven. I hope I don't fall in love with it, because the price of one is $ 265,000 before options and I don't sell enough sofas to buy one of those. It will be a huge kick and the fastest I've ever been on the main straight to date at Summit Point is 142 mph in an Aston Martin. That McLaren should make 185 before Turn 1, and is quicker than a Ferrari 458. This will be real paste-your-eyeballs-in-your-helmet stuff and its pretty hard to drive any car over 400 HP on a road race course at 10/10 ths unless you are a pro. I expect to be both awed and respectful of this car's capabilities. I won't be the one to wreck one....lol.

Needless to say, the store will be closed on Thursday Nov. 6th....

Attachment 6568

Get your paddle shifting skills ready, sounds like an excellent opportunity and one that you will want to throttle your enthusiasm such that you don't bring your checkbook with you that day.

Wow, That's an amazing opportunity! I hope you enjoy yourself! By the way, how did you land that?

I do some high-performance Instructing (on track) for that dealership (Aston Martin, Bentley, McLaren) and am on their email list. Of course, this kind of marketing is targeted not so much to a particular consumer, but those who use forms of social media. So what they REALLY want is for people who know cars to come try it out, then write on forums, blogs, facebook, etc. of the experience. And I can do that! They are looking to build the brand in the USA, and right now given the choice in the $ 250K to $ 300K sports car segment, most will say Ferrari 458 Italia or perhaps the Lambo. The McLaren is faster and handles better - but the Ferrari carries more panache'. To turn that around, you do events like this not so much to sell one car to one individual, but to increase brand presence and awareness. They aren't looking so much to see ME a car, but for my presence on the various car forums to talk up the brand and then maybe that person that is looking to get a car in this niche will give the McLaren a look before he buys the Italian job. What they don't want is for one of use to ball up one of their cars into the Armco...that would be bad. And I won't be the one to do it...no way.

If it comes down to it, you can sell the house and buy the car. You don't really need a house if you have a car, do you? You can cook your meals by placing the food in foil pouches and cooking it while you drive. You and your spouse can each sleep in one of the front seats. The kids can sleep in the back seat... er... trunk.... er.... a wheel well? They'll work it out.

Back in the mid-90's when all of us stretched hard financially to buy BMW M3's one of the guys had stickers printed up and we put them on the car windows. It said "You can't drive your house, but you can sleep in your car".