Used car buying guide: McLaren 650S

Back in the hazy, carefree days of 2018, we revisited the McLaren MP4-12C as prices for Woking’s second-ever production supercar dropped to around half what it had cost new just seven years previously. Now, in 2020, you could pay as little as £68,000 for a 12C, but the supercar’s dynamic shortcomings were, and remain, a blight on its reputation, so let’s bump up our budget slightly and take a look at its properly sorted 650S successor.

Despite the pair’s similar styling and mechanical make-up, this was more than a mere facelift for McLaren’s Ferrari 458 rival. With a £20,000 price hike came hefty bumps in power and torque output to 641bhp and 500lb ft, a quicker-shifting gearbox and a long-awaited chassis revamp that aimed to rectify the lack of driver involvement that plagued its predecessor.

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The 650S gained a new set of lightweight forged alloy wheels with wider tyres, a subtly reshaped aerodynamic kit that improved downforce by 27%, uprated ceramic brakes and stiffer springs.

There were improvements above deck, too, where the 12C’s archaic Iris 1 infotainment system made way for a much more intuitive and capable platform, and the interior was upholstered as standard in Alcantara.

Rounding off the overhaul was a bold new look for the front end, inspired by McLaren’s flagship P1 hypercar, that lives on today as the face of current Super Series models.

The 650S, as is Woking’s wont, came in both hard-top and drop-top Spider forms, and it was the droptop that proved the most popular, accounting for around 75% of sales. That’s good news today, not just because removing the roof allows more of that sonorous 3.8-litre V8 soundtrack into the cabin, but also because the drop-top’s folding roof mechanism is not as worrisome as you might think. The extra structural bracing added only around 40kg to the kerb weight, meaning the roof-down thrills came with minimal dynamic penalty.

With production ending just three years ago to make way for the formidable McLaren 720S, the 650S is a much less intimidating second-hand prospect than other, mainly older supercars in the sub-£100k price bracket. You don’t have to worry overly about things like corrosion, cheap replacement parts and dodgy service histories, but do remember that not all McLarens are created equal.

The 650S is among the more spec-sensitive models in Woking’s portfolio, and determining an individual used car’s price often comes down to which option boxes were ticked on the original order form. The priciest cars are usually equipped with the suspension lifting system, the rortier sports exhaust, the Meridian surround sound system and – above all – acres of extra carbonfibre inside and out.