As fun as they are, supercars aren't exactly the most reliable machines on the planet. It's not necessarily that they're poorly built, it's just that the range of day to day undertakings that your standard passenger vehicle goes through is a bit different than what a supercar is designed for. Take Formula 1 cars for example. Their engines are feats of engineering might that normal cars can't hope to aspire to, but put one on the road and it would be a miracle if it made it past 10,000 miles.
Sure, you're probably thinking, "it must be so hard to be a supercar owner," but the truth of the matter is that constantly having to watch for low driveways and staying within range of a gas station that supplies high octane fuel can put a bit of a damper on the fun. To help, McLaren has just decided to extend its warranty program to match Ferrari's policy. The McLaren Extended Warranty program, which launched in 2014 to extend the standard three year warranty, can now be extended up until the car turns 12 years old. Unfortunately for P1 daily drivers, the program only covers cars on the British automaker's lower Sport and Super Series cars, leaving owners of Ultimate variants on their own.
Even for unfortunate cases when owner skill runs dry and a wrecked 650S emerges on the roadways, the warranty won't do a thing to help. What it does do is protect against defects that may have been baked into the car during its build phase. Water damage, normal wear and tear, standard maintenance, non-OEM components, and paint work are not protected by the policy, and neither are any McLarens sold in China or Australia, although the extension program will likely roll out to other regions in 2017. The warranty can be extended 12 or 24 months at a time since some owners buy their supercars as a long term commitment while others simply trade them like playing cards.
We're guessing most McLaren owners don't worry about these things too much, but at least this gives McLaren an edge since Ferrari recently extended its warranty program up to 12 years.
