Jay Leno learns to drive his own McLaren MP4-12C at Dunsfold +video

Jay Leno learns to drive his McLaren MP4-12C

You happen to be one of the worlds’s best-known petrolheads, and you also own one of just 64 McLaren F1 road cars ever made.

So when the company that made your McLaren F1 decides to make a new car – albeit not quite at the same exalted level of supercardom as the F1 – you have to have one. So you phone McLaren and place an order.

Thus starts Jay Leno‘s journey to McLaren MP4-12C ownership, an experience he’s relayed on Autopia and one he’s rather impressed with. Of course, he’s Jay Leno so you’d expect McLaren to be very accommodating. And they have been (more of that in a moment). What surprised Jay was the ordering process.

As anyone who has ever bought a car – from a Fiesta to a Ferrari –  knows, the salesman is there to stack the order. According to Jay the opposite is true at McLaren. In fact he was advised, when trying to add ceramic brakes to his 12C order, that unless he was planning on using his car on track it was pointless spending the extra.

Jay says the same applied to his decision not to have carbon fibre in the cabin. The salesman was honest enough to say it was just a cosmetic option and had no weight-saving benefits. So Jay didn’t order it. A refreshing experience and one you’d hope is duplicated whoever is on the end of the phone speccing their MP4-12C.

But where Jay’s fame did score dividends was when he visited McLaren to see ‘his’ McLaren MP4-12C. Because apart from a factory tour – which not many will get – he also got a driving lesson in the MP4-12C from McLaren’s Chief Test driver Chris Goodwin – which almost no one will get. And at the Top Gear Dunsfold track just up the road from Woking, where most of the development work on the 12C was done.

Fortunately, Jay remembered to take along a film crew and sound man for his McLaren outing, so even if you’ve ordered your MP4-12C and McLaren don’t wheel out Chris Goodwin for you, you can at least vicariously enjoy the benefits of his tutelage through Jay.

It’s a tough job being Jay Leno. But Jay’s probably the best man for the job.

By Cars UK