-UUUUUCK! I am going to die. I assumed if I ever died in a car, Id be the one driving. Let it be quick. I dont want to slowly asphyxiate after breaking my neck. That would suc-
A massive impact jerks the car around. My butt lifts out of the seat but the seat belt pins me. It feels like piano wire trying to split me. Ambient light seeping through my clenched eyelids vanishes. Its dark and were still careening at extreme speed.
Did we just roll? Are we upside down? We are inverted and not slowing down. Another enormous bang and were right side up again, per my internal gyroscope. Were still airborne and theres a moment of nothingness, just whooshing wind and that stomach-dropping feeling, like on a Six Flags ride that plummets you 15 stories in five seconds. Is this like the eye of the storm, the calm before shit gets real? Will the landing be what kills me? When will we lan-
An explosive thud and were rolling over again. I cant take much more. Please, let this end. We slam around again and finally come to a creaking rest. I blink twice, recalibrating my eyes, blinded by the bright California sun. Were right side up. Smoke from the airbags and a cloud of dust envelop the chirping car in a hazy cloud, but its not on fire. Small victory there. My eyes survey my body for blood or compound fractures.
The car was largely intact, though a wide debris field dotted the steep mountainside.
No visible wounds. I spastically fire each of my limbs, praying for painless function. Success. My fingers frantically spider over my face, feeling for gashes or anomalies. Normal. The driver checks out, too.
I close my eyes. For the first time since the car left the road, I exhale.
I was the one who suggested we undertake the five-hour-plus drive from Los Angeles to Monterey,
California. I even suggested the very route that was nearly my demise: Route 33, a serpentine road that bisects the Los Padres National Forest, twisting you up to a summit of 5,100 feet before winding you back down onto Route 166.
This was in August 2018, when British supercar maker McLaren let me, an automotive journalist, pilot a 570S Spider, a $235,000 drop-top coupe that boasts a midmounted twin-turbo V-8 engine, good for 562 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of twist. From a dead stop, it shrieks to 60 mph in just over three seconds. In another 6.5 seconds, 124 mph. The sensation of that kind of speed is otherworldly. The road and surroundings warp around you as you hurtle through space in a machine that becomes more alive the closer you push it to the limit. McLarens are beloved for how accessible they make the knifes edge.
Another journalist, an eager twenty-something kid from England whom Id never met, was my passenger.
Route 33 is not meant to be driven at ten tenths. Its a technical route with tight hairpins that can appear out of nowhere. When I swapped places with the kid, he ripped off, seemingly capable. The 570 was lively and twitchy as he pressed harder, but his inputs seemed smooth and the car was responding favorably.
Less than five minutes later, he ran out of talent and we ran out of road.
We had traveled 225 feet out from where the 570s now-mangled tires last touched asphalt and some 70 feet down the mountain. Thats about one New York City block. Although wed gotten up to 110 mph, we left the road at 70, flying over two metal drainage pipes, each the diameter of a manhole cover, and missing most of the bigger trees. The car was largely intact, though a wide debris field dotted the steep and loamy mountainside. My sweatshirt, stored in the now-demolished frunk, was located some 80 feet back up the cars flight path. My phone was never found.
It took several minutes to catch my breath after clambering up the 50-degree slope to the top of the hill. The shock dissipated and, after talking to the highway patrol-When vehicles go over the side here, we get body bags ready. We rarely see survivors-and watching him wave off the air ambulance, I borrowed the officers phone, walked away from the scene, and called my parents. I kept it together until my father quietly said, He couldve killed you. Those simple words triggered a full breakdown and I just sobbed, thick tears leaving streaky trails down my dirt-caked face. I told him I needed to call my fiance, and his parting words stuck with me: Im glad youre okay. Planning a wedding is a lot better than planning a funeral.
One door was still up, waving at me: Hi there. Glad I was able to protect you.
I wiped away the tears and peered down at the mangled McLaren, its bright-orange body barely visible through the thick shrubbery. One dihedral door was still up, waving at me: Hi there. Glad I was able to protect you.
Theres a one-piece carbon-fiber safety cell under here, a McLaren engineer said later that evening at Pebble Beach, rapping the side of a 600LT, the newest model to emerge from the companys Woking production line. This MonoCell is virtually bombproof. Youll survive just about anything in a McLaren. I glanced at my only injuries: a nick on my hand, the result of grasping at a pricker bush when climbing up the mountain, and the already-scabbing scrapes on my shins from the knee airbags that had shielded my legs. I wasnt even sore, contrary to the paramedics prediction.
McLaren employs a carbon tub as standard in every single car it produces.
Credit McLarens multi-championship Formula One team for the pioneering invention. Race cars are designed to go fast and protect the driver. A decade after founder Bruce McLaren perished while testing one of his race cars, a carbon-cell tub was created for the 1981 MP4-1 F1 car. Rival teams pilloried the idea, believing it to be unsafe and their all-aluminum chassis to be superior. After McLaren driver John Watson walked away from a horrific fireball crash that split his car in two at Monza, every Formula One car eventually had a carbon cell installed. When McLarens iconic three-seat F1 road car debuted in 1992, engineers included a carbon tub. McLaren employs a carbon tub as standard in every single car it produces-the only car manufacturer to do so.
We need the carbon fibers strength to protect our occupants, Charles Wildig, head of design execution for McLaren, offered in a charming British accent. Especially, for example, when enthusiasm overcomes adhesion and a high-energy crash results.
To create the tub for all McLarens vehicles, dry sheets of carbon fiber as thin as two pieces of paper are placed into a tool mold and resin is injected into the mold under high pressure. After the mixture is compressed and baked, youve got a tub that can withstand more than 50 tons of force in a front crash. Thats the equivalent of turning the tub on its end and stacking four London buses on top. It wont break, Wildig said. McLaren declined to comment on the price, but producing a single carbon-fiber tub likely costs about $10,000.
In the 570S Spider, the tub is the stable, core building block upon which bits are added to complete the chassis. For example, the A-pillars-the sides of the windshield-marry reinforced aluminum to the tub. When I expressed surprise that the pillars didnt crumple during our wreck, because they had visible damage from the impact, Wildig shared, We require those pillars to withstand more than three times the weight of the 570S being placed on the corner of the windshield without breaking.
Crashes like the one I survived are extremely rare. Rolling a McLaren is really difficult because of how low the mass is to the ground. Driving a McLaren off a slope is one of the few ways you can do this-as you well know, Wildig said. Crashing into an object is over in 100 milliseconds, and big aluminum beams up front absorb that force in a front impact. In a sustained crash like yours, where its a long time before the vehicle comes to a stop, shedding energy is vital to surviving. Our debris field meant the kinetic energy from the crash sloughed off the parts of the car that were designed to disintegrate, like the front fascia and even the frunk.
We crashed one 675LT twelve times, Wildig recalled. The tub was perfectly fine after each test, so we rebuilt the chassis around it and crashed it again. You cant do that with a metallic car.
I now get the teensiest pang of panic when Im on curvaceous mountain roads.
The tub McLaren incorporates into every model it produces represents the apex of safety. Ordinary cars dont have a carbon cocoon because the likes of, say, a Nissan Maxima arent powerful enough to warrant it. Thanks to solid crash--safety standards, though, manufacturers have worked tirelessly to build a (usually aluminum) version of a safety cell into every vehicle, giving you a chance to walk away from what mightve been a deadly crash just a few decades ago.
Im typically not one to reflect on seismic life events, but when the event is so catastrophic you mentally replay it daily, multiple times, you are altered, whether you like it or not. I drive slightly slower now, especially with a passenger onboard. I get the teensiest pang of panic when Im on curvaceous mountain roads. And Im warier of riding with anyone I dont fully know behind the wheel.
Before I left the site, a firefighter handed me a blinker from under the side mirror. A memento, he said. Still caked with dirt, it resides beside my bed. Whenever my eyes study it, I flash back to the instant when I knew we were about to fly off the mountain. Goose bumps always appear.
Returning to work has been a largely smooth process, with few hiccups. While testing the new Ford Raptor, engineers invited us to jump the pickup on a closed, off-road course. I was stoked until the minute the wheels left the ground. The sensation of falling in a speeding vehicle snapped me back to the crash, and it took a second to regain my focus. When I let another journalist tear up the side of a mountain in Abu Dhabi in a new Audi, my brow was flecked with sweat. But when Im behind the wheel, when Im in control, I feel confident.
I will never be a race-car driver, but I feel a slight kinship, because the same technology that protects them also saved my life. Im terribly sorry this accident happened to you, but Im glad you were in a McLaren, Wildig said. Me too.