Mighty McLaren Spider is shockingly comfortable
I must provide a warning: This may be the most boring road test of a supercar I ever write.
There will be no feats of daring bravado, no vivid descriptions of lurid burnouts, no grandiose depictions of tire-shredding broad-slides accomplished with James Bond-like élan.
There was no opportunity to test on a racetrack and no first-class trip to Italy or Germany where speed limits are essentially nonexistent. I simply drove the hulking supercar on our police-infested streets as one would a Toyota Camry or Chevrolet Impala. But, to my surprise, I came away even more impressed.
Of course, I would have preferred a stint at Mosport or even a blast up some sinuous Alpine pass, all my time spent in the car with either my foot planted to the floor or the steering wheel seesawing in my hands. Instead, I was reduced to driving the hyper-powered McLaren like it was a real car, dealing with real roads, navigating realworld situations.
And the MP4-12C Spider came through with flying colours. Oh, there are some detriments to having just 1,199 millimetres to the top of your roofline and being shaped like a flying wedge — ingress/egress is for the limber of knee, the seats for the thin of waist and the cargo capacity for the Spartan of travel — but for the most part the mighty McLaren is as civilized as most passenger cars and far ahead of most anything remotely as “super.”
That’s certainly true of the ride, where the combination of a phenomenally rigid chassis, some cross-channelling of suspension components and a combination of air and steel damper springing renders a ride not so far removed from luxury sedan.
The chassis’ basic building block is the Formula One-like carbon-fibre tub, which is so stiff that one barely notices any difference between the coupe and the Spider ($287,200) I tested. It’s the foundation for one of the stiffest chassis I have ever tested and, as any ride and handling engineer will tell you, absolutely essential for getting the best out of the suspension.
The MP4’s suspenders are also cross-linked — left front to right rear and right front to left rear — so that, under severe cornering loads, the reduced weight on the inside wheels actually firms up the suspension of the outside tires. Doing so eliminates the need for mechanical anti-sway bars (which generally degrade the ride). Throw in the air/spring shock absorbers that offer significant adaptability and you have a ride, in Normal mode at least, that is shockingly comfortable.
It’s hard to think of a sports car that coddles its passengers quite as well as the McLaren. And I am not just talking about other supercars; the MP4’s suspension compliance is better than any Corvette I have driven, ditto any sporty Mustang and, of course, it makes a Viper look positively barbaric. That it can do so with levels of grip and corner-carving matching a Ferrari 458 is quite astounding.