720S

At Geneva in March 2017 Mike Flewitt called the 720S the first time McLaren had replaced an entire product family. The second-generation Super Series kept the mid-engine carbon recipe of the 650S and rebuilt everything around it: the Monocage II extended the tub into an upper carbon cage, the M840T grew to four litres and 720 PS, and the body's cooling moved inside double-skinned doors. Four hundred Launch Editions sold out before the first car left Woking in April.

The Spider followed in December 2018 with a spine-less Monocage II-S and a folding hardtop that cost just 49 kg, and the specials stayed deliberately small: fifteen Apex Collection coupés themed on European circuits in 2019, fifty Le Mans cars in 2020 for the 25th anniversary of the 1995 win. The American magazines, meanwhile, had made the car famous by beating its own numbers — ten-flat quarter miles from a rear-driven V8 that undercut the hybrid holy trinity.

Production of the 2023-model-year cars ended in December 2022, and the 750S took over the Super Series in April 2023 — by McLaren's own telling at least thirty per cent new, which is another way of saying seventy per cent 720S. No production total was ever published; the UK registry counts about nine hundred cars, and the market prices the rest of the mystery.