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

This is a brand new

mclaren

720s

spider

and it is the

best

mclaren

you can buy. Okay, t

here

's the Sena, the F1, and the P1, but they all cost over a million dollars and are incredibly limited in production when it comes to regular McLarens. Calling this car regular is a bit of a stretch since the starting price is around 300k but anyway as far as regular mclarens go this is the

best

and today I'm going to show you why I borrowed this 720

spider

of oguera. la jolla which is the mclaren dealership

here

in the san diego area, oguera has always been the bentley lamborghini rolls-royce dealership but they just added mclaren as well and now all the new mclaren models are starting to arrive including this one as well What exactly is the 720 Spider?

Well obviously it's the convertible version of the regular mclaren 720 that I reviewed about a year and a half ago and this car just went on sale. It has rear-wheel drive and uses a 4-liter twin-cylinder engine. turbo v8 that makes 710 horsepower and 506 lb-ft of torque and will do 0-60 in 2.8 seconds and yes the starting price is just over 300k before options and of course the options are plentiful , the

720s

spider is more expensive. than its main rivals, the Ferrari 488 Spider and the Lamborghini Huracan Spider, but this car has more power than those and stronger performance; In fact, this car's numbers come close to rivaling true supercars like the Porsche 918 Spyder and McLaren's P1.

Of course, this car is also packed with quirks and features, so today I'm going to take you on a tour and see. I'll show them off, then I'll take it out on the road, drive it, and then to give you a dig score and for more of my thoughts on the 720s spider, click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer, where I've also compiled a list of the five cars I would buy with the budget of 300,000, the base price of this car. tag alright I'm going to start off with the quirks and features of the 720 with probably its most important feature and that would be the roof right now it's obviously down if you want to raise it you press a little button on the center console. and then the process does its job very quickly, in fact, the entire roof goes up completely in just 11 seconds, which is one of the fastest in the entire industry.

Usually in my videos, after I lift the roof, I immediately put it back on. down again so you can see how it goes down, but not this time because there are two very interesting features worth discussing with the roof up. I'm going to start with my favorite feature in the entire car, okay, so look up. the roof and you can see that there is a glass panel on the roof so you can have the sun shining even when the roof is up which is really cool except if you live in a very hot place and the sun just hits you and you don't you want there to be no cover that you can just close for shade here, so it can get really hot in this car with the sun coming in, but McLaren thought this car has something called an electrochromic roof. it's a 9000 option and it creates its own shadow so it works, you press this little button on the roof and you can see right now the roof is completely transparent, you can see through it, look at this, I press the button and now I have shade and so now I'm protected from the sun and it's not hitting me and it's incredibly hot inside this car, but let's say you want to see the sun, you want the sun to come out to enjoy your full sun experience, just press that. button again and now the roof instantly transforms and is sunny again.

This is one of the coolest things I've seen on pretty much any car. I think it's absolutely worth the nine thousand dollars. Imagine telling your passenger, oh, what you are too. sunny, how is it now? The other interesting element worth highlighting with the roof up is called the barrel. Now look at this. Walk up to the door with the door in the up position. I'll get to that in a minute and you can see it there. Here are two buttons labeled canvas with arrows pointing up and down. Pressing the up arrow raises a cover at the rear 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. The area is empty so mclaren allows you to lift it up and then you can use it for storage if you want as long as you have the roof in place. Once you've put whatever you want in there, you press the down arrow and the top. Go back down and you have additional storage on top of what you have in the cabin and inside the front boot, which is a very good idea, it basically gives you access to that as additional storage if you need it now, perhaps the most interesting thing that However , what happens with the tonneau cover is that if you get back in the car and try to lower the roof after you have 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 tonneau cover on. roof down and make it hit something 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 actually lowers the roof if the car knows you've entered the tunnel Which is a very good idea for McLaren and since I'm talking about lowering the roof, I guess it's time to lower the roof.

To do this, you press the small roof but on the center console and then once again the process works quite quickly compared to other supercar roofs. Now the next interesting element that forms with the roof down is the wind deflector, which is designed to prevent the wind from blowing over the car and from entering the cabin. You mess your hair up in a lot of cars, the wind deflector is just a little plastic thing that snaps into place, but in this car it's powered, there's a little button next to the convertible top button, if you pull it , the wind deflector.

It appears about halfway between the seats, if you pull it a second time the wind deflector goes all the way up and then it is in place and keeps the wind over the cabin so you can enjoy the outdoor experience without excessive wind. If you want to lower the wind deflector again, it's obviously the other way around: you press the button and then the wind deflector goes back down and now you can get that full wind experience. One interesting thing with the wind deflector on this car is you. You can lower the wind deflector even with the roof up and that way you can have some sort of breeze inside even if you don't want to commit to a full top down experience and speaking of things going up, we have to talk about the system aerodynamics of this car right now, this car is in the slipperiest situation possible, but if you press this arrow button on the center console under the right circumstances, the rear spoiler will go up at the rear to provide more downforce. for sport driving or track driving if you want to go back to slippery mode you can do that just press the arrow again and then drive a little bit and eventually that spoiler and stuff will retreat back to the car and while 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 and look at it, you can see that there is no visibly obvious door handle to open the doors, you have to reach between the door panel door. and the window there's a big hole here, you kind of feel around and eventually you feel a plastic panel on the door, you pull on it and then the door opens like a supercar door should and once you're inside the car, if you want to open the door it's also a little unorthodox instead of a traditional mechanical door handle you just pull it the door opens in this car you have an electronic trigger and to do that you pull this little silver latch and then the door opens electronically from there you just push it all the way then it opens and you can go out through another interesting element with the doors that you probably saw in one of the previous shots, when you were able to open the door you can't just pull it the handle and open it, instead if the window is up you actually have to wait for the window to go down a few inches so it can pass the windshield frame so that when it goes up it doesn't hit the windshield frame and rest and still with The topic of things going up and down in this car, let's talk about the gauge cluster right now.

You can see that the gauge cluster is down or in what I call its sleeping position the moment you turn the car on in the gauge cluster. it stands up, tilts and shows you everything you need to know when you go and turn the car off again the gauge cluster goes back to sleep it folds up and goes into its off position automatically now interestingly you can have it in this position While As you drive, if you put the car in track mode, the gauge cluster will also fold down and there is a screen on top that will show you only vital information, only what you need 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 follow mode and you decide you want to see the entire gauge cluster, there's a little button on the left of the steering wheel that you can can press and that will bring it back up and in fact you can press that button at any time to raise or lower the gauge cluster, it doesn't really matter what mode you're in it all comes down to your preference if you want to see the screen small or the larger screen with more information, I got our friend the window sticker next and I want to talk about some of the options on this car.

Now the base price of this car is 305,000, he adds. in destinations around 4500 and you're around 310 before you start adding options but the options are plentiful especially in this car and there are some surprisingly high prices here for example the five thousand nine hundred and forty dollar sport exhaust although I admit . It sounds pretty good, listen, okay, maybe that's worth five thousand nine hundred and forty dollars, but here's another one: the twelve-speaker stereo system in this car costs four thousand four hundred and twenty dollars, of course, I already mentioned the electrochromic roof for ninety one hundred one hundred 100 and how about this this car has 360 degree parking cameras the cost is 3 100 although frankly I think it's cool when you're parking a supercar you're always so nervous that you're going to hit something I'm not sure Where visibility ends is always bad. 360 degree parking cameras make a lot of sense in supercars and yet very few of them have them, but this car does and I think it's worth paying $100 for that option just because it makes it easier. maneuver this car at low speeds.

Now, below, there are a few other interior items worth mentioning and I wanted to start with the keyhole. If you look on the center console, right in front of the button for the power convertible top, there is a small hole that is where you are supposed to place the key while driving. I'm not sure why you don't keep it on a keychain, 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's lined in alcantara, which I don't like.

It seems like the best material for cup holders with evaporative drinks, but it's there more as an afterthought than anything else, interestingly, there is. In fact, there is another cup holder in this interior, behind the infotainment screen, under the dash, there is a second cupholder that is also lined in Alcantara and is even more difficult to reach. It's not the biggest cupholder in the world in this car, but hey, at least it has another interesting one. The element in the middle of this car is the vents, now you can see on the dash we have three circular vents, they seem to make sense, they all look the same, pretty simple, but in the middle you also have this strange fourth triangular vent with this giant plastic switch that you can use to turn it on or off or direct the airflow, it doesn't fit in at all with the other climate vents, but I guess McLaren probably had a hole in there and they said, "You know, we should really give it a quarter climate vent and they did that now we move on to the infotainment system in the mid 720s I have to say it's surprisingly good it's strange to have it oriented in this portrait mode like the portrait mode on a phone but if you get past that and you get it done quite quickly, it's actually surprisingly responsive to your touch, it's easy to use and not incredibly compromised like many supercar infotainment systems, they're usually an afterthought but this one is quite usable, easy to get into the navigation, easy to go to The climate control screen goes to settings and responds very well to your touch.

This actually surprises me. Now the information system andEntertainment also has other interesting elements. I want to start with an awesome one on the navigation system. This car has something called a trip planner. where you can enter multiple destinations, you enter a starting point and then you can enter several others and go on a journey instead of just having one navigation destination. I've been in legitimate, rational cars with well thought out infotainment systems. which do not have this feature but they do have it in the mclaren in case you want to go somewhere but want to add a stop at the post office and the gas station in your 720s spider now comes another interesting element in the infotainment system Here is the selection of language.

Many cars allow you to choose from several 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 US English, British English and Australian English. which I've never seen as an option on any car before, Australian English is pretty close to British English, you wouldn't think you'd need that, but the founder of mclaren, bruce mclaren, was from new zealand, probably grew up speaking effectively australian english and So I suspect that's why they include that, I've never seen it in any car, very interesting.

Then, another interesting element in the infotainment system, the color of this car's ambient lighting can be changed, which is actually surprisingly unusual in supercars, although common in luxury ones. In cars, you go into the ambient lighting and you can select from this color wheel and that will be the color of the ambient lighting in your interior and then you go back to the navigation settings. This is one of my favorite features on this car, you can choose what voice you want the navigation system to use when it's directing you, but instead of just choosing as male or female, we currently have it set to American English samantha and if you click in that, you can also see that there is another option, british english, serena, so who do you want?

Give your instructions: Samantha speaks American English or Serena speaks British English, a difficult decision that McLaren drivers will now have to face. The next step is to move on to the exterior of the 720. There are a few interesting elements worth highlighting and I want to start with the air intake. 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 get air into the engine, even the McLaren 570 itself has an intake. here, but this car doesn't, except it does, it's actually hidden between the door panel and the window, there's like a second door panel and if you look back you can see there's an air intake giant there and the air is channeled down.

This path basically comes from the front of the car and goes into that hidden entrance. It's a really cool piece of design, a huge air intake and sort of a hidden double panel door on the outside of this car. Now, the next step is to move towards the front of the car. back of this car I want to talk about the exhaust now you heard them a little bit before but I want to talk about the location of it, which I 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 thing.

The purpose of this car looks really cool, like some sort of rocket launchers that make the car take off, which I guess is indeed what it is now. The other interesting thing in the back here you can't see or access the engine in the back of this car, the engine is under the trunk cover and it's under this engine cover and you can't access it, you need special tools, only McLaren technicians are really able to go back there and check it, that being said there is still an interesting glass at the back of this car, you can see it has these kind of flying buttresses coming from the passenger compartment in a line to the back.

They're glass, which is weird because they don't really look at anything. but they are clear you can see through them instead of just painting them black they are glass so you can look through. I guess the plastic cover on the other side is quite strange but interesting and quirky, and another interesting element back here is just how much of the roof mechanism can you see when the roof goes 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 working if you look inside it's actually cool if you're interested in how things work and especially how convertible tops on cars work and then moving on to the front of the 720s there are a couple of interesting things up here, a Do I want to talk about the windshield wipers and the ridiculous discrepancy and size between them?

You've got this big dominant wiper in the middle and then you've got this little baby wiper that's on the side and it's kind of for the ride. I don't think I've ever seen such a large discrepancy in the key. I love that the little dots on the key that let your thumb know you're touching the trunk button are actually the wheels of the car and the graphic with the trunk raised is a great little piece of subtle design that I love, but anyway, if you open the trunk by pressing that button, you won't see anything interesting, it's just a pretty standard sized trunk for this class, you can get some bags. here if you want to go out for the weekend, but generally speaking it's a pretty standard and normal supercar trunk, and those are the quirks and features of the 720s spider, now it's time to take it out on the road and see how it all drives .

Well, driving the 720s Spider, what I really love about this car is that it has everything, there is nothing you want in a supercar car that this one doesn't have. You get true hypercar-like performance with this car, that is. Obviously it's nice that you have the incredible styling that you get from a McLaren and the 720 is especially crazy looking, you have this incredible performance and then you also have it now that we have the roof down. I mean, there is no better situation, obviously, the 600 lt is more. of a driver focused car and I can instantly say that it is much more comfortable than a 600 LT, but the problem with having a more driver focused car is that you can't use it as much, just make it fun, exciting and usable. crazy exotic car and in southern california and florida and texas and obviously in the summers in the north you put the top down there is nothing more you could want in the world the ride is hard as you would expect from an exotic car but not as hard It's not tolerable, I really think you could drive this every day as long as you're comfortable with the attention and obviously the cost and risk of parallel parking it and stuff, plus the transmission is actually very good, even at low speeds, already You know. of supercar transmissions at low speeds fail a bit can be a bit cumbersome not the best this is not like that at all you really feel like it can be used as a rational car if it didn't know any better just driving like this it almost feels like you know you're in a mustang, you're in a chrysler sebring, whatever kind of fun convertible you know, just relax and then obviously you hit the bottom or you turn a corner or you look around and you realize things are different. , but the point is that it's a rational, usable car, if that's what you want, which is crazy to say about a car that costs like 390,000, it's a lot less than a 918 Spider, I mean, those things are a million five right now. in the market, this doesn't work much worse than that steering is just incredible, the car is so fast, so precise and so precise to drive, it's almost unbelievable, um, a lot of this happens, I mean, I already did the normal 720s.

I was incredibly impressed with that car. It feels almost identical to that one. Wow, struggling a little for traction. He probably should have shot it a little better, but you want to see what he can do. This car is definitely an all-wheel drive system. I don't think it's the worst thing for this car, I think it could be beneficial, maybe, oh, the steering is like that, what's it like? It's so sharp, it's so amazing, even just making small wheel movements, like lane changes, it's so responsive and communicative. It's not dramatically better than the Huracán, it's a little better than the 48 I think, but you're still at this point where it's so sharp that you wonder if this can be improved given the speed this car is going, the sharpness of the direction. amazing responsiveness and the throttle, this thing is amazing and it's really crazy how I can drive like it's a normal car and then I step on the gas and it feels like I've unleashed the beast and that's the mclaren 720s spider, no this.

The car isn't as crazy as the crazy track focused McLaren Senna I'll be reviewing later this month and it's still very expensive even for a car like this, but it really is the ultimate McLaren, the ultimate combination of bold style and incredible performance. and as top-down driving experience as you can imagine and now it's time to give this car a top score starting with the weekend and styling categories. The 720s Spider is a beautiful car and gets acceleration out of eight out of ten. The 720s Spider does zero. to sixty in about 2.8 seconds and gets a 10 out of 10.

The handling is tremendously precise, they are not as perfect as the 48 track and it gets a 9 out of 10. The fun factor is about as good as it gets at this speed . and this performance and the roof removed and it gets a 9 out of 10. Finally a cool factor and these are amazing head turners that stop just before the really crazy stuff like the 918 spider on the aventador svj and it gets an 8 out of 10 . for an overall weekend score of 44 out of 50. Next up are the daily categories and features and the 720 is a little better than the class, has a great infotainment system, a 360-degree camera, that wonderful electrochromic roof, the large folding instrument panel and I'm surprised to say it but it gets a 7 out of 10.

The comfort is average for these cars and it gets a 4 out of 10. The quality is good, the interior is fantastic and the materials are great, but I'm the newest player in the game. McLaren will have to prove its reliability over time and gets a 7 out of 10. Practicality is average for the class and gets a 2 out of 10. Finally the value on the 720 is decent, it is incredibly expensive but also has hyper performance car for supercar money it's still supercar money and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 26 out of 50. Add it up and Doug's score is 70 out of 100, which places it here among modern supercars, ties with the Ferrari 48 Spider, but the Huracanes have surpassed it solely on quality, as I keep hearing wonderful things about the Huracan's reliability.

The 720 is the highest rated McLaren I have ever tested, except of course the excellent one.