Here's Why The McLaren 720S Spider Is the Best New McLaren

this is a brand new McLaren 720's Spyder and it is the best McLaren you can buy well okay there's this Senate and the f1 and the p1 but those all cost over a million dollars and they're incredibly limited production as far as regular MacLaren's go and pulling this car regular is a bit of a stretch since the starting price is around $300,000 but anyway as far as regular MacLaren's go this is the best one and today I'm going to show you why I've borrowed this 720's spider from O'Gara La Hoya which is the McLaren dealership here in the San Diego area o Guerra has always been the Bentley Lamborghini rolls-royce dealership but they've just added McLaren as well and now all of the new McLaren models are starting to roll in including this one so what exactly is the 720 s spider well obviously it's the convertible version of the regular McLaren 720's which I reviewed about a year and a half ago and this car is just coming out on sale it's rear-wheel drive and it uses a four liter twin-turbo v8 that makes 710 horsepower and 568 pound-feet of torque and it'll do 0 to 60 in 2.8 seconds and yes the starting price is just a hair over $300,000 before options and of course options are plentiful the 720s Spyder is more expensive than its chief rivals the Ferrari 488 spider and the Lamborghini Huracan Spyder but this car has more power than those and stronger performance in fact this cars numbers come close to rivaling true super cars like the Porsche 918 Spyder in mclaren zone p1 of course this car is also full of quirks and features so today I'm going to take you on a tour of it and I'm going to show them to you then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the 720s Spyder click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer where also rounded up a list of the five cars that I would buy with the three hundred thousand dollar budget this cars base price tag all right I'm going to start the quicksand features of the seven 20s with probably it's the most important feature and that would be the roof right now it's obviously down if you want to put it up you pull on a little button in the center console and then the process does its thing very quickly in fact the entire roof goes all the way up in just eat 11 seconds which is one of the fastest in the entire industry now usually in my videos after I put the roof up I then immediately put it back down again so that you can see how it goes down but not this time that's because there are two very interesting features worth discussing with the roof up I'm gonna start with my very favorite feature in the entire car alright so you'll look up in the roof and you can see there is a glass panel in the roof so you can have the sun shining through even when the roof is up which is really cool except what if you live somewhere really hot and the Sun is just beating down on you and you don't want that there's no cover that you can just pull closed in order to get shade in here so it can get very hot in this car with the Sun coming in but McLaren thought of that this car has something called the electrochromic roof it is a $9,000 option and it creates its own shade to make it work you press this little button on the ceiling and you can see right now the roof is fully transparent you can see through it check this out I press the button and now I have shade and so now I'm shaded from the Sun and it isn't beating down on me and incredibly hot inside this car but let's pretend that you want to see the Sun you want the Sun out to enjoy your full Sun experience just press that button again and now the roof is instantly transformed back to being sunny this is one of the coolest things that I have ever seen in basically any car I think it is absolutely worth the full nine grand just imagine telling your passenger oh what you're too sunny how about now now the other interesting item worth noting with the roof up is called the tonneau now check this out you walk up to the door with the door in the up position I'll get to that in a minute and you can see there are two buttons here labeled tonneau with arrows pointing up and down if you press the up-arrow then a cover list in the back of the car that's the tonneau cover the cover that covers the roof when the roof is down but because the roof is up that area is empty so McClaren allows you to lift it up and then you can use it as storage if you want to as long as you have your roof in place once you put whatever you want back there you press the down arrow and the tonneau goes right back down and you have extra storage in addition to what you have in the cabin and inside the front trunk which is a really good idea it basically gives you access to that as additional storage if you need it now maybe the most interesting thing that happens with the tonneau cover though is if you get back in the car and you try to put the roof down after having opened the tonneau cover the car will make you manually confirm that there is nothing back there because it doesn't want to put the roof down and have it hit something that you have back there and break everything so you have to manually tell the car yes I promise there's nothing back there before it will actually put the roof down if the car knows that you've accessed the tonneau that is a pretty good idea for McLaren and since I'm talking about putting the roof down I suppose the time is now right to actually put the roof down now in order to do that you press down on the little roof button in the center console and then once again the process does its thing also rather quickly compared to other supercar routes now the next interesting item that forms with the roof down is the wind deflector which is designed to keep wind kind of blowing over the car and not coming into the cabin and messing up your hair in a lot of cars the wind deflector is just a little plastic thing you kind of put in place but in this car it is power operated there's a little button next to the convertible top button if you pull on that the wind deflector comes up about halfway in between the seats if you pull it a second time the wind deflector comes up all the way and then it's in place and it keeps the wind kind of going over the cabin so you can enjoy the open-air experience without excessive wind if you want to put the window flexure back down obviously it's just the opposite way with the button push it and then the wind deflector goes back down and you can get that full wind experience now one cool thing with the wind deflector in this car is you can put the wind deflector down even with the roof ah and that way you can get kind of a breeze going in the interior even if you don't want to commit to a full top-down experience and speaking of things that go up we have to talk about this cars arrow a system for aerodynamics now right now this car is in its slipperiest possible situation but if you press this arrow button in the center console under the right circumstances the rear wing will kind of rise up in the back to provide more downforce for sport or track driving if you want to go back into slippery mode you can do that you just press arrow again and then drive a little ways and eventually that spoiler and stuff retreats back into the car and since we're on the subject of things that go up and down let's talk about the doors now when you first approach the door you look at it you can see there's no visibly obvious door handle in order to open the doors you have to stick your hand in between sort of the door panel and the window there's a big hole in here you kind of feel around and eventually you feel a plastic door panel you pull on it and then the door opens right up just like a super car door should and once you're inside the car if you want to open the door it's also a little bit unorthodox instead of a traditional mechanical door handle you just pull it in the door pops open in this car you have an electronic release and to do it you pull on this little silver latch and then the door pops open electronically from there you just kind of push it the rest of the way then it's open and you can climb out one other interesting item with the doors you probably saw it in one of the earlier shots when you go to open the door you can't just pull the handle and fling it open instead if the window is up you actually have to wait for the window to roll down a few inches so that it can clear the windshield frame so that when it's going up it doesn't hit the windshield frame and break and still on the subject of stuff that goes up and down in this car let's talk about the gauge cluster right now you can see the gauge cluster is down or in what I call its sleeping position the moment you turn the car on the gauge cluster rises up tilts and shows you everything that you need to know when you go and turn the car off again the gauge cluster goes back to sleep it sort of folds away and goes into its off position automatically now interestingly you can actually have it in this position while you're driving if you put the car into track mode the gauge cluster will also fold down and there is a screen on the top of it that will show you only vital information only the stuff you have to know on the track and none of that other stuff that might distract you like your phone information or your media your navigation whatever but if you're in track mode and you decide you do want to see the whole gauge cluster there's a little button to the left of the steering wheel that you can push and that will make it rise back up and in fact you can press that button at any time to kind of raise or lower the gauge cluster it doesn't really matter what mode you're in sort of comes down to your preference if you want to see the small screen or the larger screen with more information next up I have procured our friend the window sticker I want to talk about some of the options on this car now the base price of this car is three hundred five thousand you add in destinations by forty five hundred and you're around three hundred and ten before you start adding options but options are plentiful especially on this car and there are some surprisingly high prices in here for example the sport exhausts five thousand nine hundred and forty dollars although I will admit it sounds pretty good take a listen okay so maybe that is worth of the five thousand nine hundred and forty dollars but here's another one the twelve speaker stereo system in this car is four thousand four hundred and twenty dollars of course I already mentioned the electrochromic roof for ninety one hundred dollars and how about this this car has 360 degree parking cameras the cost of that is thirty one hundred dollars although frankly I actually think that's brilliant when you're parking a supercar you're always so nervous you're gonna bump into something you're not sure where it ends visibility is always bad 360 parking cameras make so much sense in supercars and yet so few of them actually have it but this car has it and I think that option is very much worth paying thirty one hundred dollars just because it makes it easier to maneuver this car around at low speeds now next up there are a few other interior items worth mentioning and I wanted to start with the keyhole if you look in the center console right in front of the power convertible top button there is a little hole that is where you're supposed to rest your key while you're driving I'm not sure why you don't just keep it on a keyring but you have that option if you want it now on the other side of the power convertible top button you have a cup holder a very small cup holder and it is lined in Alcantara which does not strike me as the best material for cup holders with like evaporating drinks but it's they're kind of more as an afterthought than anything else interestingly there is actually another cup holder in this interior behind the infotainment screen below the dash there is a second cup holder which is also lined in Alcantara and even harder to reach not the world's greatest cup holders in this car but hey at least it has them one other interesting item in the middle of this car is the climate vents man you can see on the dashboard we have three circular climate vents they seem to make sense they all look the same fairly simple but in the middle you also have this fourth weird triangular vent with this giant plastic switch you can use to turn it on or off or direct the air flow it doesn't fit with the other climate vents at all but I guess McLaren probably had a hole there and they're like you know we really ought to give it a fourth climate vent and so they did now next we move on to the infotainment system in the middle of the seven 20s and I have to say it's surprisingly good it's weird to have it oriented in this article mode like portrait mode on a phone but if you get past that and you do fairly quickly it's actually surprisingly responsive to your touch easy to use and not incredibly compromised like so many super car infotainment systems are they're usually such an afterthought but this one is actually pretty usable easy to enter navigation easy to go to the climate control screen go to settings and very responsive to your touch I'm actually surprised by this now the infotainment system also has some other interesting items with it let's start with an impressive one in the navigation system this car has something called trip planner where you can enter multiple destinations you enter a starting point and then you can enter several others and sort of go on a trip rather than just like having one navigation destination I've been in legitimate rational automobiles with well thought-out infotainment systems that don't have this feature but they have it in the McLaren in case you want to go somewhere but you want to add a stop at the post office and the gas station in your 720s spider now next up another interesting item in the infotainment system here is the language selection a lot of cars let you choose between various different languages in the infotainment system but this car has a rather unusual one you can choose between three different types of English you can choose between USA English British English and Australia English which I have never seen as an option before in any car Australian English is pretty close to British English you wouldn't think you would need that but the founder of McLaren Bruce McLaren he was from New Zealand he probably grew up speaking effectively Australian English and so I suspected that is why they include that in there never seen it in any car very interesting next up another interesting item in the infotainment system the ambient lighting color of this car can be changed which is actually surprisingly unusual in supercars though it's common in luxury cars you go to ambient lighting and you can select from this a wheel of colors and that will be the ambient lighting color in your interior and next up moving back to the navigation settings here's one of my favorite features in this car you can choose what voice you want the navigation system to use when it's directing you but rather than just choose like male or female we currently have it set to American English Samantha and if you click on that you could also see there's another option British English Serena so who do you want to give your directions Samantha speaking American English or Serena speaking British English a hard choice McLaren drivers will have to face now next I'm moving on to the outside of the 720s there are a few interesting items worth noting and I want to start with the air intake on the side now if you look at the side of this car you're probably thinking what air intake because there really isn't one a lot of exotic cars have an air intake here to bring air into the engine even MacLaren's own 570s has an intake here but this car doesn't except that it does it's actually hidden in between the door panel and the window there's like a second door panel and if you look back in there you can see there is a giant air intake there and air is channeled down this path coming basically from the very front of the car and into that hidden intake it is a really really cool piece of design a massive air intake and sort of a dual panel door hidden on the outside of this car right now next up moving around to the back of this car I want to talk about the exhaust now you heard them a little bit earlier but I want to talk about their placement which I absolutely love it's like on the top of the bumper above the license plate it's like it takes priority because that's the whole purpose of this car it looks really cool like sort of rocket launchers having the car take off which I guess in effect is what it is now the other interesting thing in the back back here you can't see or access the engine in the back of this car the engine is under the tonneau cover and it's under this engine cover and you can't get to it you need special tools only the McLaren technicians are really capable of getting back there and checking it out with that said there is still some interesting glass in the back of this car you can see it has these kind of flying buttresses that come from the passenger compartment in a line all the way down to the back those are glass which is strange because they don't really look at anything but they are clear you can see through them instead of just painting it black they're glass so that you can look at I guess the plastic tonneau cover on the other side rather strange but interesting in quirky and one other interesting item back here is just how much you can see of the roof mechanism when the roof is going up or down take a look at this I don't think I've ever seen a car where you can see so many gears turning and everything moving you can see exactly what the roof is doing if you look in there it's actually kind of cool if you're into how things work and especially how car convertible tops work and next time moving on to the front of the 720 s there are a couple of interesting things up here one is it's like the windshield wipers and the ridiculous discrepancy in size between them you have this one big dominant windshield wiper in the middle and then you have this tiny little baby wiper that's on the side and it's kind of a long for the ride I don't think I've ever seen such a large discrepancy next up on the key I absolutely love that the little dots on the key that let your thumb know that you're touching the trunk button are actually the wheels in the car on the graphic with the trunk up that's a great little piece of subtle design that I just loved but anyway if you pop open the trunk by pressing that button you will see nothing interesting it's just a trunk fairly standard in size for this class you can get some bags in here if you want to go away for the weekend but generally speaking it's a pretty standard pretty normal supercar trunk and so those are the quirks and features of the 720 s spider now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives alright to driving the 720's spider the thing that I really love about this car is that it just has everything there's nothing you want from a car from a supercar that this doesn't have you have true like hyper car almost performance with this car which is obviously a good thing you have the incredible styling that you get from a but clarin and a 720s is especially crazy looking we have this unbelievable performance and then you also have now we got the roof open I mean there's no better situation obviously the 600 LT is more of a driver focused car and I can tell instantly this is much more comfortable than a 600 LT but the problem with having a more driver focused car is you can't use it quite as much this thing you just it's a usable fun exciting crazy exotic car and in Southern California in Florida and Texas and obviously in the summers up north you put the down there's nothing more you could want from the world the ride is rough like you'd expect from an exotic car but not so rough that it's not tolerable I really think you could daily Drive this as long as you were comfortable with the attention and obviously the cost and the risk of parallel parking it and stuff also the transmission is just really really good even at low speeds you know a lot of super car transmissions at low speeds they kind of bumble it can be a little cumbersome it's not the best this is not like that at all you you really feel like it can be used as a rational car if I didn't know any better just driving along like this it almost feels like you know you're in a Mustang you're in a Chrysler Sebring any sort of you know top down fun convertible just relaxed and then obviously you floor it or you go around a corner or you look around and you realize things are different but the point is it's a usable rational car if that's what you want which is crazy to say about a car that costs like three hundred and ninety thousand dollars it's a lot less than a 918 spyder I mean those things are a million five right now in the market this doesn't perform that much worse than that steering is just amazing the car is just so quick and so sharp and so precise to steer it's almost unbelievable a lot of this goes to I mean I already I already did the regular set up to 720s I was incredibly impressed with that car this feels almost identical that Wow struggling for traction quite a bit there I probably should have rolled on it a little better but you want to see what they can do this car is definitely an all-wheel-drive system I don't think would be the worst thing for this going I think that could be beneficial maybe Oh the steering is so how is it that's so sharp it's just so incredible you're just doing small wheel but it's like lane changes it's just so responsive and communicative it's not dramatically better than the Huracan it's a little better than the 488 I think but still you're at this point where it's so so sharp you wonder can this even be improved upon given the speed this car goes the sharpness of the steering the incredible responsiveness in the throttle this thing's amazing and it's really insane how I can just kind of drive along like it's a normal car and then I floor the throttle and it feels like I've Unleashed the Beast and so that's the McLaren 720s spider no this car is not as insane as the crazy all-out track Focus McLaren Senna which I will be reviewing later this month and it's still really expensive even for a car like this but it really is the ultimate McLaren the best combination of bold styling and incredible performance and a top-down driving experience that you can imagine and now it's time to give this car a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the 720 s spider is a beautiful car and it gets an 8 out of 10 acceleration the 720's spider does 0-60 in like 2.8 seconds and it gets a 10 out of 10 handling is tremendously sharp they're not quite perfect like the 48 pista and it gets a 9 out of 10 fun factor as nearly as good as it gets with this speed and this performance in the roof off and it gets a 9 out of 10 finally cool factor and these are amazing head-turners that stop just short of the really insane stuff like the 918 spyder in the event or svj and it gets an 8 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 44 out of 50 next up for the daily categories and features in the 720 s it's just a bit better than the class it has a great infotainment system a 360-degree camera that wonderful electrochromic roof the great folding gauge cluster and I'm surprised to say it but it gets a 7 out of 10 Comfort is normal for these cars and it gets a four out of ten quality is good the insurers fantastic and materials are great but being the newest player in the game McLaren will have to prove its reliability over time and it gets a seven out of ten practicality is average for the class and it gets a two out of ten finally value in the seven 20s is a decent one it's insanely expensive but it's also got hypercar performance for supercar money still it is supercar money and it gets a six out of ten for a total daily score of 26 out of 50 add it up in the dug score is 70 out of 100 which places it here among modern supercars it ties the Ferrari 488 spider but it's just edged out by the Huracan solely due to quality as I continue to hear great things about Huracan reliability the 720's is the top-scoring McLaren I've ever tested except of course for the great one [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,359,815

Rating: 4.9178991 out of 5

Keywords: mclaren 720s, 720s spider, mclaren 720s spider, mclaren 720s spider review, 720s spider review, 720s review, mclaren 720s review, new mclaren, mclaren, mclaren supercar, mclaren review, doug demuro, demuro, de muro, doug de muro

Id: W9CvaI8FXgs

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Mufasa_LG]

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE that you can get a 360 camera on this car. I'm baffled as to why all supercars (and all normal cars tbh), don't have this as standard... Especially in cars such as this, that are so difficult to park, having a 360 camera is a major stress saver. HUDs should also be standard in all cars imo.

I think this is the only car I would consider upgrading for atm.

[u/Where_am_I_now]

That roof is so awesome. It baffles me how that even works, technology is so amazing.

What a beautiful car. I think I'm in love.

[u/nukelauncher95]

The roof and tonneau must weigh next to nothing for it to operate so quickly. I won't be surprised if the roof hydraulics are tied into same hydraulic system as the steering and suspension instead of having it's own pump.

[u/helpdiene]

The R8 Spyder also has a similar mechanism where you can put the rear window down while the top is up. Makes it great for hearing the engine note while the weather is not the greatest. If it had a hard top like the McLaren and looked good even with the top up, I would've definitely picked up the spyder over the coupe.

[u/UnbridledHedonism]

I love how the clear flying buttresses give you better over-the-shoulder visibility while driving.

[u/jshah500]

So if you don't opt for the $9.1k option for the auto-window tinting, does it just not come with the glass roof or are you screwed and forced to bathe in the sun 24/7? haha

[u/Snoos-Brother-Poo]

Hey Doug, when’s that Senna video coming out? 😉

[u/MAUSECOP]

I really can’t tell if I like the design of the 720s or not, in some images it looks great while in others (like the video image) it looks a little weird. I do really like the front end and lights but I guess I’d have to see one in person to really get a good gauge.

[u/Milefromdisco]

The 720S was amazing from the beginning but now as a Spider it's pure pornography.