McLaren 720S Spider 2021 review. They're getting to be great value but this or the Ferrari F8?

[Applause] [Music] well welcome to a new harry's garage video and today's car is this the very orange mclaren 720s spider hard to tell it's a spider from here because they've got a very clever folding hard top but i i got this car in because recently i've had that ferrari f8 through b2 in and then that lamborghini huracan sort over the christmas period on extended loan and i hadn't really visited mclaren for a while we took that mclaren gt down to the south of france that was the last time we did it not featured the 720 before they actually rang up and offered the 765 lt and i said no i quite fancy the standard car because i don't know if you if you look in the classifiers these are starting to get very attractively priced i think for what they offer and that ferrari f8 tribute to much as i enjoyed it it did make me wonder just how close the mclaren was to it now and hence the reason for this test now price on mclaren's i'm going to go into a bit more detail on the pricing and what you actually pay but i'm going to just give the headline figures now this car on the road without extras 247 990 pounds that's quite a lot more than the coupe but it does come with a little extra equipment and it's quite it's a very clever um folding roof right there's either two or three patents mclaren took out because of the mechanism on it it's a very quick car as well 212 miles an hour top speed 202 if you have the hood down which is just nuts it does have a lot of extras on this car that is typical of press cars so it's not typical of a customer car but press cars they like to load them up 72 400 pounds of options on this car which i will point out as we go around and the other thing that interests me about this car is the artura the new hybrid v6 version has been announced by mclaren that's coming this year as well but this is going to remain as the flagship car let's go and have a closer look now one of those options was actually this color this mclaren orange and it's a special paint option and i think it's one of the better price options because it's only 1 940 pounds to have it in this orange and a yeah it's a proper mclaren color you'll see the brake calipers are the same color as well but i can remember the covers coming off this car at the geneva motor show in 2017 and really been surprised about the design of this headlight area and the fact that they'd actually there's a radiator line at the back here and it becomes this air scoop and it's actually a really nice led light here detail that gets completely lost in in this sort of open hole and it's all very techy this this there's air rushing up here feeding that same radiator there and then if you come around the corner that's all then vents from the back of that radiator around here um so that was the big surprise it gave us this very sort of big eyes but with no sort of central focus and i think the ferrari f8 design and those sort of snake eyes is more successful than perhaps the 720s but there's no doubting that this is mclaren as hours of wind tunnel research in this car because it's full of these ducks i'll explain these in a moment but basically this is feeding the interior but if you look down the side of the door you've got this one feeding lots of air into the car at the back here massive cut out of the door here come round here there's this other vent sort of exiting the air out of the wheel arch along the door as well we've just turned to the wheel we've got carbon brakes as standard on this car aluminium calipers all in the aid of reducing unsprung weight this is a 19 inch wheel at the front two four five 35 19 pretty p zeros on this car there's even you know if you crouch right down there's another great vent in here feeding more air into that engine the v8 twin turbo engine at the back wheel at the back is up to 20 inch so a different size 19 front 20 at the back 305 now 30 by 20 carbon brakes again aluminium caliper lots going on if you remember when we had the f8 the rear spoiler was a blown spoiler it was fixed this one just dances around when you're driving it it acts as a drs it acts as a brake um dam as well it comes up and the engine unfortunately is sort of lost that you don't get to see the engine that f8 you know ferrari dress their engine lots of carbon fiber on this you sort of peer in here you can get it to light up red i think that's an option but it's a very potent twin turbo v8 by ricardo who make it and then the twin exhaust here as well one of the wind-ups with this car is it has a sports exhaust same as f8 it just seems another excuse to sell you an option it's a very clever car you think it's all about performance but they really thought how you might use this car i'll just show you a little trick at the back if i press this button there it goes there's this very clever idea that if you want to use it for touring and you're dashing down to the south of france as we all used to do you can use this as a boot keep the roof up for the dash motorway down 58 litres of extra luggage capacity there if you don't lower the roof but just looking quickly inside this big carbon tub here's the obvious rib of it that's what's clever about the mclaren no other cars in its range the lamborghini and the ferrari are conventionally constructed while the mclaren has stuck with the carbon tub just like they had on the zonder on the ferrari enzo la ferrari all sorts of things this is normally reserved for the hyper cars rather than this class of car i'm just going to pop the front bonnet this is the most enormous hole for luggage i think it's the biggest of them all these front engine cars bigger than hurricanes bigger than the f8 tributor and if you look at those vents on top here they're actually then going into the this here and coming out and then feeding the cabin with air from there so that's you know the pollen filter and stuff like that i'm always impressed with mclaren they really think about the car and how you might use it so we're gonna do now take it outside take it for a drive yeah all comes alive when you open the door dash comes up and uh yeah pool left stalk yeah it has this comfort mode just about got used to where it puts you in a the the previous seating position typical portrait this central screen and then this rotating one at the front which is really fascinating so battery 45 days i find that quite a useful thing to have half a tank of fuel because you've got this option of two different dash layouts so you can have this this is a track version reduced more visibility out although it just you know it only actually feels there doesn't give you that much visibility but i think it's such a clever option lots of extras in here again my crib sheet are just staggering you know 300 pounds for the orange seat belts um carbon fiber paddles 1980 pounds um but i mean mclaren orange stitching on the seats is two and a half thousand carbon fiber interior components which i presume is the sort of the air vents and things 7720 it's got a 12 speaker audio system 3640 and the park assist you see we put it in reverse etc 4720 just goes on doesn't it when you order a car oh it used to be so simple now it's gone to sleep so the dash has gone down since it's got board not surprised really right so let's see if we wake it up if i press that there we go dash all says all right we are going somewhere are we good vents have to say just been living with this car you know odd months there's a little bit here i've got my phone in there i've got this little central thing i'm getting there charged and to do the apple play etc all to come up here and it's very clever we'll go into how this works but this is their system to control all the powertrain handling etc comfort sport and track all on here but you don't get it until you press active we're always once you get you know your way around it's how you make the manual i think it's very good you get this screen here that just gives a tar temperature variable drift control down here not available because i'm not in track but it does make you wonder if that's the best thing to put up there you know my son was joking whether you needed to flash up your race license for getting access in it put a code into i am a brdc member oh but the wheel oh just such a lovely wheel mclaren the one that got right from the start is just the driver involvement how how it seat steering wheel visibility ace and this wheel is just exquisite not a button to be seen um beautifully shaped lovely leather and stalks so yeah that's that's going around i can just flick a paddle and get going this one doesn't release its handbrake for some reason not sure it's probably in the setting somewhere and off we go good muscle flicks through the gears dual clutch transmission it's all clever stuff so yeah and head out onto the better road so you'll be joining us in a little bit [Music] everything's in normal this is just i've jumped in 60 miles an hour comes up with a whiff of throttles you'd imagine in this car 720 horsepower and the most enormous amount of torque is 77 newton meters um more refined than you expect i did a my usual decimal reading this is the noisy bitter road and it's around 76. so two three decibels quieter than a 911 or something like that which for a carbon-typed extreme car like this is excellent if not exceptional really so yeah nicely refined gearbox works treat in autumn so it's very easy as all cars seem to be these days good information as well from the screen a bit you have to remember with mclaren his 12 was their first car that arrived in 2011. yes i know they did a sort of slr they did the mclaren f1 but a series production car when ron dennis said we're gonna make a ferrari rival take on ferrari that was only 10 years ago and this is the point we're now at so think of it as like 911 progression and how they've honed it we've still got that proactive suspension link which is so clever it means the dampers are all linked with hydraulic pipe and they talk to each other and it means that you don't have to have anti-roll bars which is a very good thing because it allows the wheel to be free to move as the suspension wants it rather than fighting an anti-roll bar and the other thing to remember about mclaren is everything is unique it's not like aston martin that uses mercedes engines ferrari have been in the game forever they have an engine but they are sharing a little bit of technology with maserati and alfa romeo little old mclaren is doing this all by itself building carbon tub having this bespoke engine from ricardo and gearbox as well so you have to remember and i give them a little bit of slack for that because that is not easy in this day and age and i was going to discuss price sort of common knowledge that they have you know if you buy a new 720s it's not going to keep its money because you might hoped but i don't know what sort of deals they are so who knows what it is and you see them now in the classified as a hundred and something um if you want to buy a spider one of these today i saw one about 200 miles and it's about 180 000 pounds fair bit off this thing with extras i think it was 320 000 but it's all monthly payments so we ignore all that it's not as steep a depreciation it is steep but it it's not as steep as all that because there's always a deal to be done but i think mclaren shot themselves in the foot when they launched that gt series because suddenly you had a 570s despite if you wanted it 150 000 pounds they say oh no it hasn't got the trick suspension it's lower horsepower etc but it still had a carbon top it still had the same gearbox it's still twin turbo it still was chuffing quick all the journalists raved about it but it was significantly cheaper ferrari if you buy a 488 or an f8 tribute they don't sell you a 408 cheaper version of this basically the same car so i think mclaren have only got themselves to blame on the fact that the residuals are perhaps not what they wanted them to be the plus side as consumers this is a very attractive car at one two years old that gt series are probably a mistake i think they could have done something quite different but i'll discuss that in a bit because i'm about to squirt it out the hill right i'm still in normal mode i have not pressed anything here and i'm doing 32 miles an hour as i approach the delimit side and it's just starting to snow which is nice right here we go flat down and it obviously lights up and it gets going it there is a lag i find of this 720 engine it has to be it's a four liter engine produces 720 horsepower it has to get on boost to really deliver the goods and to produce that much horsepower it needs a fair bit of boost it's absolutely fine once you're in the gears but like that waiting out of town it's recognizable for the amount of turbo lag you get before it all wakes up change down the gear and then there is no mistaking the performance once you get going what i'd rather they'd done with the gt series was what porsche have done in that they have a turbo range to the rope turbo s high performance that strikes me like this 720s but imagine if that gt range was like the gt3s of from porsche where they're normally aspirated high revving and purer i would love to see mclaren do that sort of follow the gordon murray model of the t50 and do lightweight normally aspirated mozart rev loads of sound my goodness that would have been a gt series and it wouldn't have undermined this car [Applause] [Music] all right let's try launch control it's my duty to try it it's a bit of a test this bit of road because it's quite bumpy where we set off from here so it gives everything a bit of a test right i made active i'm on sport i'm gonna press launch a waiting full filter here we go it got confused on the surface there um that was a fair bit of opposite lock we put into that to keep it on the road it's one of the things isn't it with two-wheel drive there's only so much traction you can get and there's this sort of you know this sort of temperature i'd go down this road because this is an awful bit of tarmac germans would just throw their hands up on the amount of bumps and bridges and cars heading into the ditch here because of the camber but my goodness i'm getting so much information through this steering wheel mclaren have stuck with this electric hydraulic rack they haven't gone to a full electric rack interesting what they have to do it because of the safety issues with um lane departure if that comes mandatory and crash they might well have to move to electric i don't know but again celebrate the steering on a mclaren because it is top-notch and way ahead of ferrari of its quick electric steering lamborghini unfortunately that isn't nearly a patch on this this is lotus like the steering on one of these and it's one of the trademarks of mclaren and i'm really impressed the way they've stuck to their guns and kept with a hydraulic steering rack because he's a driver you really benefit right now i'm just gonna put it to active so that's sports on handling and drivetrain us energizes things a bit more a bit more vocal i think for the sports exhaust as well here's this little compression abusively did not go through there like that neither did the hurricane absolute five-star chassis behavior on this car there is a little talk that this being a spider is not quite as good um as the hardtop coupe because the 720s actually has carbon structure between the windscreen and the back that give it extra strength obviously this being the convertible uh hasn't got it but it's we're talking microns difference do you know i am going to put the roof down put the roof down i'm going down to do this at up to 30 miles an hour off it comes 11 seconds they'd say to do that little bit drafty but we are doing uh 16 16 now yeah definitely doing 60 now and it all calms down all right i'm gonna put the roof up so it's time to do some conclusions on this car up it goes i don't want very slick how that works and it's got this thing that actually changed the color like i can shade it right down or put it right back out and make it right again very clever right dislikes well design i suppose i'm just not quite in love with the design fa fabulous huracan stand knockout it's up against a pretty tough opposition there's a sense person a purposes about it but i just still haven't got to like those big apertures at the front yeah running costs servicing is expensive um the service packages are expensive you want extended warranty and my goodness it likes to drink fuel i'm 12.4 mpg i haven't seen above 14 mpg out of this okay i haven't been sat on the motorway and that gt where we did sit on the motorway was heading towards 30 awesome lights of this car right and i'm just going to go into my band just quickly touch the gear and it all comes alive those paddles that are on a rocker so you can use either rocker to go up or down the gearbox [Music] it's it's just wonderful to punt down a challenge road because this steering is heavenly it just reminds you you know like those m cars i had in recently they were better good electric rats they were nothing like the field perfect gearing and the steering ratios and then you've got a very clever chassis underneath you yeah it hasn't got the the locking different there is just like diff in the rear but on road as you drive it it's so clever how i can use that proactive and have no anti-roll bars and just better ride than you ever expect from a 212 mile an hour missile like this yeah performance i'm enjoying it more than the f8 it doesn't feel quite as wild and crazy weirdly and i looked at evo magazine they figured a 720s 5.6 to 100 miles an hour to give you a sense of how fast that is we also figured a bugatti veyron and that did 5.8 to 100 miles an hour so this is quicker than a bugatti veyron we never thought we'd have that he has too much performance really but it it somehow it's in a different way to the f8 i don't feel as i need to push it quite as hard as i did with that so i'm enjoying it more then is the practicality of it i mean it's ridiculous to say was this crazy mclaren but to have those two booths um areas to have a roof that falls as efficiently as that it's funny isn't it that they've thought about those sort of details when they were designing the car brakes deserve a special mention as well i just love when you press them hard one it's a solid pedal and two i can see the wing come up in the back they're just well what do you expect of carbon brakes done by mclaren they put a lot of work into obviously but just with the aero working as well gearbox is doing trick stuff this is just it's sporting just hear it going through the gearbox change it when you want sometimes i do it manually or sometimes i leave it to its own devices it's 50 50 really gets it right most of the time so yeah in conclusion out of a choice of f8 720s or lamborghini huracan which would i choose well one i think it beats the f8 if you've handed me the key to both of them i would go for the 720s over the fa the nervousness just didn't enjoy the f8 as much as i wanted to and i hate the noise that the turbocharged engine makes against the huracan big surprise mighty close they're sort of different cars i if i wanted the spider i'd buy the mclaren because i can't fit in a hurricane spider if i wanted a coupe i'd be so tempted with that enormous aspirated v10 but it's mighty close between these two cars be interesting where the arturo takes us with his hybrid v6 engine where that goes 720s mighty achievement to put this amount performance and make it accessible and it makes me scratch my head why they do the ultimate series the centers and that sort of thing when there's so much available from this 720s there's quicker than they're on anyway how much performance do you want just wish they'd done that a gt series would normally aspirated engine 9 000 10 000 rpm sort of car i would have loved that as a junior to this but there you go that's my review of the mclaren 720s spider mighty accomplished car highly attractive secondhand properties and pretty good even proposition as well and um itself for mclaren for putting this much technology and doing it all in house and making such an extraordinary drivers car just in ten years there you go hope you enjoyed this video if you have keep watching keep subscribing more videos coming along very soon you

Channel: Harry's garage

Views: 363,313

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Id: OPLsfQ6YbjY

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/peanutsfan1995]

A question I ask myself regularly!

Jokes aside, I feel like you also have to consider dealer networks and how likely you are to get good service. McLaren are building their brand, but Ferrari do have a remarkably robust infrastructure.

[u/forceuser]

Based on the fact that people are saying the F8 has a pretty muted exhaust note, I'd have to go with the 720S. Not that I'm in the market for one or anything.

[u/Slammernanners]

I'd get a used 720s because used McLarens are cheap.

[u/GettCouped]

I'm sorry chief but nothing about a Mclaren is a great value. Lost me at the title.

[u/VandelayOfficial]

I’d take the McLaren, the F8 is unattractive.