McLaren 650S
Why 5.4: McLaren kept the 12C's hydraulic steering and carbon tub, fixed the styling and the flat turbo soundtrack critics disliked, and the ownership pattern followed: 650S values have fallen to around $130k from a $265k sticker, which is exactly what pulled in buyers who actually wanted to drive one rather than collect one.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The 3.8-litre twin-turbo pulls cleanly to 8,100 rpm and cracks on the upshift. But this is the engine that earned McLaren the vacuum-cleaner comparison, its flat-plane bite buried under boost, which leaves it near the bottom of the supercars here.
8-cylinder · turbocharged · 8,100 rpm redline · rated 5.6 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €245k (2014) → €120k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
There aren't any — strict two-seater.
No ISOFIX — occupant-sensing passenger airbag deactivation, same as the rest of the McLaren range.
McLaren Owner's Handbook (shared 12C-derived platform) (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
The 650S is the car that answered the MP4-12C's rocky launch without a clean-sheet redesign — sharper styling, more power, and the same hydraulic-assist steering rack McLaren still hadn't replaced with an electric one. Reviewers stopped comparing it unfavorably to the 458 Italia and started judging it on its own terms, and the 675LT built on the same platform a year later is the more celebrated result. The 650S itself depreciated hard and fast, the standard McLaren pattern this index has already logged for the 12C and 570S, and today's roughly $130k average price makes it one of the cheapest ways into a carbon-tub, hydraulic-steered supercar on the used market. That price collapse is doing the same work here it does everywhere else in the McLaren range: scaring off the badge-chasers and leaving the field to people who wanted the chassis specifically.