An acquaintance of mine has a collection that includes one of just about every car McLaren has made, and of all of them, the HS is among his absolute favourites. I’m standing with James Banks, formerly head of Bespoke Cars at McLaren Special Operations (MSO), and we’re surveying one of the most exclusive projects the division ever worked on – and, by more than one account, one of the best cars ever to wear a McLaren badge, despite few people knowing it even exists.
Should an MSO HS ever pass you in traffic, you certainly wouldn’t miss it, but you probably wouldn’t realise you’d seen anything out of the ordinary; perhaps a well-specified 650S or maybe a 675LT whose owner ticked the box for the carbon pack. There’s little on a quick glance to suggest it’s one of only 25 cars, each built on the same line as the P1 hypercar rather than the standard Super Series production line, and each a little different, tailored to the tastes of 25 hand-picked MSO clients. Never publicised, never wafted under the noses of the press, a real ‘in the know’ kind of car.
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