Jay Leno's GarageJay Leno's Garage is quite familiar with the McLaren brand. Jay has been very vocal throughout the years, praising the company, cars, and engineers including F1 designer, Gordon Murray. The latest episode to the channel features a McLaren 720S modified by 1016 Industries. You may be thinking that modified McLarens are dime a dozen but Jay assures us this one is very different.
Wider And Lighter Is Better
Straight into the video, we're introduced to Peter Northrop, who is CEO of 1016 industries. The inspiring young man tells us that they've replaced every single part of the car. A bold claim but one that he proves true.
He says that every body panel has undergone a redesign making the car lighter and wider. To achieve this, they widened the tracks by 90 mm in the front and 120 mm in the rear. The body panels are now naked carbon fiber, which reduces the weight of the car by 400 lb. An impressive number on a car that weighs 2,937 lb in stock form.
The Reason Behind The McLaren 720S
Jay brings up a great point when he tells Peter "You obviously have your choice of what supercar to do?" He names off examples like Ferrari and Koenigsegg and asks the simple question of why this specific car? Peter tells us that this is a car in stock form that already does impressive things that it should be capable of doing.
It's a car that has 700 hp in stock form. It's lightweight from the factory and does 0-60 in the sub-3 second range. He tells us that he wanted to take something that was already out of the ordinary and see how much further he could perfect it.
Driving The 1016 McLaren
After 14:40 seconds of polite conversation, Jay has had enough talk. His eyes light up and ask if they can go for a ride. While opening the door to get in, Jay notices that the door is incredibly light (compared to his McLaren P1). Peter agrees and tells Jay that they replace the shocks in the doors with slower-extending ones. Otherwise, the door opens too quickly and would knock him out.
During the drive, Jay tells Peter that the "whole body package feels factory to me". Jay also states that he "likes the seamlessness of it". Now, to any true gearhead, hearing those words from Jay Leno himself is the ultimate high praise.