Settling into the driver's seat, I found the cockpit not overly snug, as I had feared. With my seatbelt fastened, right foot on the accelerator and hands on the leather-wrapped steering wheel, I was ready for The McLaren Experience.

A throaty roar followed us out of the car park into heavy rain.

In Normal mode, the car eased through traffic and onto the Island Eastern Corridor, where we switched to Sport mode. A quick stab at the accelerator sent the car hurtling forward, leaving other vehicles standing in sheets of spray.

Then we tried Track mode: the steering became harder, the suspension went rocky and the roar from the exhaust was spine-tingling.

We went to a Chai Wan godown area, where a potential 320km/h could be reached, but there was traffic, so we headed for Shek O Road.

There, in view of the pouring rain and the HK$3 million car, I asked McLaren Hong Kong general manager Max Cheng to take the wheel.

In Sports mode, he demonstrated the superior handling capabilities of the MP4-12C, pushing every curve to the maximum in Sports mode. But in fact, due to weather, he was using barely 20 percent of the car's potential performance.

Cheng said that when Ron Dennis, head of McLaren Motors, set out to build the MP4-12C, the target was a supercar that was easy to drive on ordinary streets.

To achieve this, designers included settings for the suspension, steering and performance, most derived directly from McLaren's F1 cars.

For driving to work you can set the mode to Normal, and it feels like a sedan. Feel like a bit of fun? Switch to Sport mode: steering stiffens slightly, gear up-shifts are a little later, and the growl from the exhaust is more throaty.

Then, if you find an open road (or a twisty one that you know well) you may switch to "T" for Track.

Now your McLaren lunges ahead, giving a thrilling taste of F1 action and the 592 horsepower you could get at 7,000 rpm.

Motoring editor Roger Boschman has been in Hong Kong since 1974 and has raced his own car on Macau's Guia Circuit.