McLaren Messed Up The Brakes On Several Cars Because It Confused Left With Right

If you’ve found yourself locking up and spinning sideways in a hard turn in your McLaren, we may have good news: it might not have been your fault. Okay, maybe it’s not exactly good news. Because if the cause isn’t your lack of talent, it might have been the result of crossed wires back at the factory in Woking.

Not crossed wires, necessarily, but crossed hoses. A case of rear brake lines routed to the wrong wheels in cars like the Artura that could leave owners cross and their McLaren service tech busy.

On-Track Incident Leads To A Shocking Discovery

Forgive that dramatic-sounding heading, but in this case it’s accurate. It all started with a car that lost control on the track. According to NHTSA documents, the driver of a McLaren lost control in a corner when a wheel locked up in what the documents call “an unusual way.”

While normally a racetrack incident wouldn’t have made it to the attention of the manufacturer, in this case, it did. The sports car company investigated the car to find out what had happened, and what it discovered was that at least two brake hoses were going to the wrong corner of the car.

A unique part of McLaren ownership is that each car is tested on a rolling road (that’s Brit for a dynamometer, or dyno, as it’s colloquially called) before it leaves the factory. This test is supposed to identify problems with the stability control system, the exact sort of problem that this brake line routing would have caused.

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McLaren has discovered in its records that of the vehicles that had failed the test because of Electronic Stability Program issues, 80 of them didn’t have a positive retest in the records. The car involved in the wheel lock-up was one of those 80.

The automaker says its “working assumption is that the remaining 79 vehicles were rectified but without a recorded positive.” In the documents filed with the safety regulator, it said the investigation “has not revealed any information to suggest that this is more than a one-off incident.”

Recall Will Check 80 Cars Just In Case

Of course, safety is on the line, so that’s not quite good enough. Out of “an abundance of caution,” McLaren has decided to recall all 80 to ensure that each one has the correct brake line going to the correct wheel.

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29 of those vehicles were sold in the US and are subject to this recall through the NHTSA. They include certain 600LT, 720S Spider, Artura, GT, and GTS models built from 2020-2025. The fix is a simple inspection and fixed brake routing if there’s a problem. Dealers will be notified, and customers will receive a letter telling them about the issue.

Source: NHTSA