570GT

Make
McLaren
Segment
Coupe

In quite a few ways, McLaren's a real hotchpotch of the old and new. On one hand, it's a brand with a long and storied history predominantly focused on motorsports, with some of the most legendary figures in their respective disciplines driving for the team; on the other, the firm's experience with road cars is comparatively brief, with the current McLaren Automotive division only being established six years ago or so. It's a very weird mixture, yet that hasn't stopped some incredible machines being created.

Perhaps the most obvious example of this would be the 'Sport Series' 570S family, which McLaren handily had laid out side-by-side at its Goodwood booth. At one end of the spectrum, you have the track-only Sprint model that bridges the gap between the regular (yet brilliant) 570S and the GT4 racing car, with the more user-friendly 'GT' model not only proving a 570-hp supercar can work in the real world, but has also opened up a new market (especially in the United States, considering the amount of interest it's received over there) that McLaren has never really explored before. As we said earlier, an unusual combination, but one that the Woking-based company has managed to masterfully pull off.

McLaren is a brand with an incredibly storied heritage that stretches back decades, so it's no real surprise that the rest of the firm's stand was dedicated to more noteworthy past models. Sitting pride of place, for instance, were three historic racers that represented McLaren's many exploits over the years in Can-Am, Formula One and IndyCar racing, with the FoS's supercar paddock being home to a 650S Can-Am edition and a P1 GTR dressed up to honour the 40th anniversary of James Hunt's F1 championship victory in 1976 - driven fittingly up the hill by Freddie Hunt, the son of the late driver and pretty handy behind the wheel of a racing car himself.

Details on McLaren's future were pretty scarce in comparison, but they were there to be found. For example, there was the P1 LM - a product that, though more done with McLaren's blessing instead of in-house - that ushers in an exciting new step in the already eye-catching tale of the hybrid hypercar. We also managed to coax out a brief hint during our ride up the Goodwood hill that the next Macca model could be a 650S successor, with the test session that was alluded to in our conversation likely to be linked to a shakedown run for the upcoming supercar. All in all, then, a fair bit of McLaren's past, present and future to be pumped for.