The McLaren 570S isn't your normal car, so before you hop in and take it for a spin on some twisty mountain roads, there are a few things you need to do to get it out of your driveway without incident. Senior Producer Christopher McGraw shows you how to setup a McLaren 570S the way you want before you hit the road.

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Transcript

CHRISTOPHER MCGRAW: So the first thing you're going to want to do if you're going to go out and drive your McLaren is get inside the car, obviously. So you have your key right here. Make sure you have your key on you and that the door is unlocked, because if it's locked and you open the door, the door will open with the key, but it'll set off the alarm. Super loud, very high pitched, very annoying. I actually just set it off a couple minutes ago.

[CAR ALARM BLARING]

And my ears are still ringing. So this big McLaren logo in the middle is to unlock. As you see, it rolls down the window a little bit. And if you look at the door, it's not easy to see where the handle is. Once you figure it out the first time, it'll be easy from then on. But finding it that initial time is probably the most difficult. So if you just run your hand underneath this part of the door here, you'll feel a rubber button. Press that, and it'll lift the door up.

Now that we're inside the car, the next thing that we're going to want to do is start up the car. And that's fairly simple. Like a lot of different cars, it's got a start and stop button for the engine. The only thing that makes this a little different from any other car, other than the fact that it sounds a lot louder on startup, is that you do have to push down the brake pedal with quite a bit of force.

So if you think you're pressing down the brake hard enough, and you hit the start button and it doesn't go, try pressing down the brake even harder and see if that does it. So reaching forward here, pressing it down, as much as I would-- is if I'm hitting the brakes on a race track, so pushing down really hard. And then the Start Engine/Stop Engine button is just right here in the middle. So we'll press that.

[ENGINE ROARING]

And like I said, it's pretty loud. But it also sounds really awesome. And to stop the engine, you just do the same thing. You don't even have to have your foot on the brake to stop it. You just press it, and it turns off.

[BEEPING]

And that beeping is just saying that the key is detected in the vehicle. That way, you're not leaving your key in here while you stop at wherever you're parking. And the last thing you want to do is leave the key inside of your McLaren 570S.

All right. So now we've got the car started. We're still in my driveway, haven't started driving yet. What I want to do is attach my phone via the Bluetooth to the infotainment system. So in order to do that, you're going to need your phone, and you're going to need to know how to use this infotainment system. It's fairly straightforward. It does take a little bit getting used to, but within a day you'll be able to figure it out.

The first thing I'm going to do is actually turn down the fan, which is really high right now. So to turn down the fan, I press this little fan icon button here, and there's a plus or minus on the touch screen. Then I hit the Back button. That's something that's a little wonky, so if I'm in the AC Settings, and I hit Settings, this little gear here, it won't take me directly to the settings. I have to hit Back and then hit the Settings.

And this will bring me a bunch of different stuff-- Wireless and Networks, Volume Settings, Audio, all that. And you can scroll down a little bit. So we have Wi-Fi on. Bluetooth Settings is underneath Wireless, and Bluetooth is on. And right now, since I connected my phone yesterday, it does say McGraw's iPhone, but it's listed as disconnected. If I want to add a new one, I just go to Options, Device Name Discoverable On, and then I can go into my Bluetooth on my phone, and the McLaren is now discoverable.

Now, you might be looking at your phone, and something popped up, but there's nothing there that says McLaren or 570S or anything like that. This system is called the IRIS system. So if you look on your phone, IRIS is what's going to show up. So you tap IRIS. It'll bring it up. To pair with McGraw's iPhone, confirm that it is showing this pass key. So you just make sure the pass key is the same, and it'll allow you to pair and pair on your phone.

So you hit Pair on both devices. I'm going to allow it to know my contacts. And now I'm all set, connected to Bluetooth. You can make phone calls and you can listen to music.

The next thing I'm going to want to do is to raise the car. So when it was in the garage, it was lowered to normal drive height. From my driveway, there's a little bump at the end, so the McLaren would not be able to make it out without scraping on the bottom. And that's the last thing that I want.

To raise and lower the vehicle, first you'll have to know how to control and get through the menus on the gauge cluster here. So there are a couple of stocks here. This one is for the cruise control. You have your windshield wiper here. Then you have your turn signal and your lights here. And then this controls the menu system within the gauge cluster.

And it's fairly straightforward to use. Right now, the McLaren is at its lowest setting. And the way that my driveway is, I wouldn't be able to get out without completely scraping the bottom, which is not something I want to do on a quarter-million-dollar car, or any car, for that matter. So I need to figure out how to raise the vehicle.

So first thing-- you want to just mess around with it a little bit. Figure out what setting you're in. Right now I have it selected to the vehicle raising setting. And in order to raise, you just flip the stock up, just like if you were turning right with the turn signal. And so that raises the car, and that will allow me to get out of my driveway without damaging the vehicle.

So right now, my ride height is normal, and I want to raise it. So I'm going to move this stock, which is right down here. I'm going to move this stock up in order to raise the ride height. So first you've got to get to the ride height. And you just use the stock, up and down. You just use the stock, up and down, to switch through this menu.

So I hit OK. Once I get to that, I go forward. It says, "ride height normal." And then I go up, and the vehicle will raise. You don't have to hold it the whole time. You just press it once, and the vehicle will raise up. And there we go. The ride height is raised. That way, I can get out of my driveway. No problem.

Now, say you want to lower it. The vehicle automatically lowers when you drive beyond 35 miles per hour. So you don't have to lower it manually when you pull out of the driveway. As soon as you get fast enough, it'll lower for you. But say you want to take some photos of it in your driveway. It's best to take the photos with it lowered. I think it looks a lot better.

All you have to do is come down to this stock one more time. Press Down. If you press Down, and you're not in the right menu, it defaults to the lighting, which can be kind of frustrating. So what you do is, you use the stock, press it that way to go back. Just make sure you're in the ride height mode. Press Down, and the vehicle will lower. Now the vehicle is at normal ride height. You move the stock up to raise.

It does take a little bit of messing around with the menus to get comfortable. It's a little different than a lot of the infotainment systems out there. But once you get used to it, it's fairly easy to use.

All right. So this is the 570S Spider which means it is a convertible and it's pretty simple to use. Do this while you're in your driveway as well, not when you're out driving. There's a button right here. Push it down. The windows roll down a bit. You've got to press and hold it, otherwise it'll stop, just like it did there. It Takes a little while. There you go. And then you get a notification saying that the roof is down.

Now, if you want it to come back up, it's just like a window button. Push down to roll the windows down. Pull back for it to go up.

[MOTOR SOUNDS]

There you go. Roof closed. While it's all happening, there is a little warning on the gauge cluster that says, "roof operation in progress." So you want to make sure that it finishes before using that.

The other thing is, when you put the roof down, it does not make the windows go down or the rear window go down. But that's pretty simple to do. From the driver's seat, you have buttons here that are totally normal to roll down both windows. They're automatic. You can roll them back up automatically as well. And then the rear window is right down here, right to the left of the Reverse button. You press that to roll that down, and you pull it up to roll it up. Fairly easy.

So let's talk about the different drive modes that you can have in the 570S. So as you'll see, we have some knobs here, and there's also an Active button that's lit up right there. And this is for handling. That's what the H stands for. P stands for Power train. And you'll notice there are three settings. N stands for Normal, S stands for Sport, and T stands for Track.

Before changing anything, you're going to want to make sure that this Active button is lit up. And I don't mean just the word "Active." The button itself has to be lit up. So if I press that, you'll notice that it turns orange. And now these are active. So before, when this was off, you can look up at your gauge cluster. It says, "Handling: Normal, Power Train: Normal." As soon as I press that, it takes its instruction from these knobs. So they're both set on S, so it says "Handling: Sport, Power Train: Sport."

You can set both of them individually. So right now, handling is at Normal. Now it's at Sport, and now it's at Track. That entire time, the power train has stayed at Sport. I'm going to keep it on Sport. But same thing here-- you can have Normal power train, Sport power train, or Track power train. I'm going to keep both at Sport.

The second that you turn this off, everything goes back to normal. So if you press that and the light turns off, everything's back to normal. One press, and everything's back to how it is set in these knobs here. You can also press this button for manual and press this button for stability control off. I'm going to keep it on auto and have stability control on for now.

The infotainment system isn't the easiest to use. It's fairly self-explanatory, but there are a few quirks. So you have nav, apps, Sirius XM, your normal radio, your media-- which in this case, since we already connected our phone, is my phone-- and then the phone to use to make phone calls.

Sometimes the Back button here works. With Phone, if I want to go back to the main menu, I can. But if I hit Nav, it'll bring up the map and say-- I want to go back. I'm hitting the Back button-- doesn't work. What you can do is hit the McLaren button, and it'll bring you back to Home. It's a little quirky, a little bit annoying. But once you get used to it, it's fairly simple to use.

We've got your settings here. This is just general settings. I can go back. But if I go into Nav and hit Settings, it'll bring up Nav Settings. This is your AC. at least right now it's AC. It'll be heat in the winter. This is your HVAC. It's all touchscreen you can use. It's pretty easy. You have your fans up here, as you can see. Hit Back to go back.

This is your mute button. That's a little weird, because a lot of people generally think that the power button is right here. But this is just the Home button. It's a little wonky, but you get used to it.

All right. A couple more things here before we leave the driveway and go on a drive. This is where your lights are. Right now, I have it set on Auto. You can change it, but I just kept it on Auto this entire time. The fog light button is there. I'm going to keep it on Auto. It's the middle of the day, so I don't need them on. But if you want the fog lights on, you can adjust all of that there.

So finally, we have the seats. And adjusting the seats in a vehicle like this is probably a little more important than in your run-of-the-mill Mercedes, Subaru, Ford, Chevy, et cetera, because it is a harsher ride. I didn't properly adjust my seats yesterday, and after 40 minutes, my back was feeling it a little bit. So in order to be super comfortable in this, you're going to want to adjust your seats.

Your seat adjustment button is actually down here. And you kind of just have to feel your way around. So this allows you to move it forwards and backwards. There is lumbar support, which is handy. It comes in handy for sure. And then there's the up and down.

I have short legs, so I have to move mine a little bit forward, but then you can move your seat back. Now, we are in a confined space here, so you can only move your seat back so far and move it up so far. But getting that seat dialed in just right is going to be important, just so you remain comfortable when driving.

Once you get that seat dialed in perfectly, you are going to want to program it, because every time you get out of the car, it just resets. So if you hit the M button down here, there's a 1 and a 2 that allows for two programs to be in there. Press the, , and then you press the 1 or the 2.

[CONFIRMATION SOUND]

You get that little alert there, knowing that it's saved. And that way, you won't have to reset everything every single time you get into the car.

All right. That was a bit long, but the 570S is a super car. It takes a little bit more to get it quite dialed in for some driving. Now that we're all set, we have the car raised. We have the lights on the way we want it. My seat is exactly the way I want it. I have the drive modes the way that I want them to be.

So now let's turn off the parking brake and go for a drive. You're going to push it to turn it off. It's just an electronic parking brake. You can pull it to turn it back. On so we'll turn it to turn it off-- so we'll push it to turn it off. Buckle up. I am still in neutral. We'll put it in drive, and off we go.

Got to go slow over that bump. There we go.

[ENGINE RUNNING]

[TURN SIGNAL SOUND]

And so I'm going to keep it raised, because it will automatically lower itself when we get over 35 miles per hour. One less thing for me to worry about.

[TURN SIGNAL SOUND]

[ENGINE ROARING]

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