Mountain High: McLaren Senna in Colorado
A film on McLaren owners, featuring collector Kathy Cargill, who owns a Senna, two 720S Coupes and a 570S Spider. She likens the drive to driving into a postcard.
Part of a series of real-life McLaren customer stories, with a sister film, 'All in a Day's Work', featuring a P1 in Tokyo.
The story
“Years ago, I could hear the sound of a McLaren coming from almost two kilometres away, it was fantastic.” Kathy Cargill sits in front of two of the latest models in her growing collection – an Azores Orange 720S coupe and a stunning McLaren Senna.
That’s how her love affair with McLaren began, and when we met, she had just put the finishing touches on a new garage to house her rapidly expanding supercar collection. The building itself is a paradise for anyone passionate about cars, but especially for McLaren fans.
Custom-built to Kathy’s exact specifications, this place looks like a life-size version of a ten-year-old’s toy box. The gleaming line of colourful McLaren supercars is lined up in front of the electric doors like torpedoes waiting in their silo. Waiting to be taken for a spin on the magnificent mountain roads of nearby Colorado.
The garage also houses a museum’s automotive memorabilia, a high-tech cleaning area with membrane walls and its own supply of deionised water, an ultra-realistic Vesaro driving simulator (equipped with a McLaren racing seat), and an immaculate set of tools.
“I absolutely love my vehicles and the memorabilia I have, so everything was designed to make it easy. I knew I wanted a very special place for these cars,” says Kathy. However, as impressive as it is, this building plays a distant supporting role to the truly extraordinary landscape that surrounds it. Deep blue skies are framed by rocky gorges with steep red sides, carved by the current of the Eagle River.
In winter, the high mountains are often impassable in any vehicle, and even in spring, hailstorms and rockslides can be dangerous. However, when the snow melts and the sun comes out, there are few better places in the world to experience the thrill of driving a car as rare and highly capable as the McLaren Senna. We were there to film Kathy on one of these trips, driving to the highest incorporated city in the USA – Leadville.
“When you’re behind the wheel of this vehicle and you have a spectacular view, no matter how you look at it, it’s like driving through a postcard; you feel the car, you feel the road, you see the landscape, and you simply can’t believe your luck in experiencing this.”