THE 720S SPIDER’S ABILITIES ARE SO MUCH GREATER THAN YOURS ARE EVER LIKELY TO BE
the long gearshift paddles that turn with it; in fact, my only complaint concerns the fiddly electric adjusters for the otherwise excellent seats, hit-or-miss affairs that are tucked down at one corner and, as you can’t see them, utterly impossible to fathom. Although the portrait-format infotainment screen looks familiar it seems to work far better than I remember, probably due to updated software – and, ah yes, there’s a bespoke B&W 12-speaker sound system that I assume can rupture my eardrums, but I have to confess that I hardly ever turn it on.
And that omission, of course, is down wholly to the fact that the 720S Spider is so intoxicating that I really don’t have the inclination to do anything other than drop the roof and drive. It’s an astonishing motor car, so crazily fast, so agile and so alert in its responses that the human brain of advanced age (i.e., mine) can barely keep up with it. There is, to be absolutely honest, a spot low down in the 4-litre V8’s rev band when in a higher gear you might find yourself momentarily waiting for the compressors to kick in, but at anything north of 2,500 (and it’ll rev beyond 8,000) you’re riding a category-10 typhoon of twist and horsepower, thrust back in the seat by the relentless momentum while laughing at the insanity of it all.
In my five days with the 720S Spider, I find myself avoiding motorways, just so I can power up towards roundabouts and then brake ridiculously late, the fat Pirellis compressing against the road surface as the brake pads bite on the huge carbon-ceramic rotors and the rear spoiler flips up vertically, slicing off speed as if I’m being pulled back by a huge invisible hand. And then back on the accelerator through the junction and, punching forward as I snap up through the gears of the seven-speed dual-clutch box, I realise I’ve left four or five cars in my wake that might as well have been standing still. It’s only on the backroads of South Wales that I proceed with some caution, mainly because the army trucks and tractors coming at me around blind corners are even wider than I am.
There’s so much to savour here, from the beautifully calibrated electro-hydraulic steering that’s race-car quick, precise and superbly feelsome, as well as the fabulous suppleness of the McLaren’s underpinnings, to the reassurance that (unless your name is Senna, Hamilton or suchlike) its abilities are so much greater than yours are ever likely to be. It covers so many bases, too, effortlessly slipping from leisurely boulevardier to rip-snorting racer and, thanks to the torsional stiffness of its carbon construction, emphatically giving the lie to the notion that droptops are “soft”. Short of loading it up with people and stuff – there are only two seats and storage space is by definition limited, though there’s room for my medium-size suitcase in the front – there’s really nothing that this incredibly talented machine can’t do.
As instructed, I do put miles on the McLaren 720S Spider – around 800 (which, in real money, works out at about 1,300km), to be more or less exact – and there isn’t a moment when I’m not enthralled. Because if there really is a supercar out there that can match its extraordinary capabilities, I’d be very much surprised.