There's a special kind of humiliation reserved for supercar owners, and it involves hazard lights in a fast food lane. A McLaren 600LT broke down mid-road trip at an In-N-Out drive-thru, because apparently even cars with carbon fiber tubs and 592 horsepower still need to eat. MSN covered the whole sad scene, and I've read it three times now because I can't stop picturing it.

The 600LT is not a delicate little thing by McLaren standards, it's the track-focused longtail version of the 570S, stripped out and louder and generally built to embarrass anything with a license plate at a stoplight. What it was not built for, evidently, is idling in a drive-thru queue in stop-and-go creep mode while its owner contemplates animal style fries.

The details are thin on exactly what let go, and the source doesn't say much beyond the basics. But a dead mid-engine British supercar in a burger lane paints its own picture. If you've ever held up a trailhead parking lot because your battery died and you left the dome light on for six hours, congratulations, you understand this driver on a spiritual level. I know I do.

The thing is, supercars are terrible road trip cars in ways their owners keep forgetting. Low ground clearance means speed bumps are a negotiation. Cooling systems tuned for 150 mph on a circuit get moody in bumper-to-bumper traffic. And a drivetrain built for moments of violence doesn't love the slow crawl of a drive-thru lane, where you're basically asking a racehorse to stand perfectly still in an elevator.

None of this makes the car bad. It makes it a car for a specific job, and that job isn't 'commute to burgers.' I'd still argue, like I did about those garage-queen hypercars in Greece last week, that a McLaren being driven on an actual road trip is doing more good than one sleeping under a cover in a climate-controlled garage. It just stings more when the driven one dies within milkshake distance of the finish line.

There's a lesson in it too, and it applies whether you're in a 600LT or a 2004 Subaru with 200,000 miles on it. The shoulder of a road trip is where your preparation shows. Does the car have a recovery plan, does your insurance cover a flatbed that can handle a low car, do you actually know where the nearest shop is. My trail rule works the same way, you don't check your gear at the trailhead, you check it in the parking lot at home.

We don't know how the story ended. Presumably the car got towed or recovered eventually, presumably the burgers got eaten or tragically abandoned, and somewhere a handful of In-N-Out customers got a story they'll tell longer than the owner will. Next time take the Camry, friend. The double-double tastes the same.