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McLaren Exploring All-Wheel-Drive Alternatives

2018 McLaren 720S

To go faster, simplify, then add lightness. While Colin Chapman’s still-quoted adage defined the early years of Lotus, his fellow garagista Bruce McLaren took a subtly different tack as his fledging team came to dominate Can-Am racing in the late 1960s with a succession of increasingly brawny Chevrolet V-8–powered monsters: Add lightness, then add more power.

Bruce and Colin are no longer with us, but their philosophies still guide the companies they founded. And the McLaren 720S is the best demonstration yet of McLaren’s core principle of Peace through Superior Firepower. With 710 horsepower, its twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 is 49 horses up on the Ferrari 488GTB, a car that’s rarely accused of sluggish road manners. At the same time, the McLaren’s power-to-weight-ratio advantage has been sharpened further with an even more carbon-intensive architecture.

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The new Monocage II tub now incorporates carbon fiber consisting of the windshield surround and continues through the center roof section. These improve structural integrity—load bearing for the 650S, this car’s predecessor, was handled entirely by the lower tub—which explains why coupe and spider versions had the same torsional rigidity. The composite greenhouse components also save weight compared to the previous model’s aluminum pillars and windshield header. McLaren says the body is 40 pounds lighter, with the 720S’s overall dry weight falling to a claimed 2828 pounds with every available lightweight option.

The Same but Very Different

So, while the fundamentals of a carbon body and a mid-mounted V-8 sending torque to the rear wheels remain the same, pretty much every detail has been tweaked or changed. Visually, the most obvious difference is the loss of the 650S’s side air intakes, with the 720S looking sleeker and more muscular without them; air is now directed to the engine and radiators by a well-disguised channel next to the rear windows. While our praise for the design at the rear is unalloyed—the back bears a distinct resemblance to the McLaren P1 with the rear wing in its deployed position—the new dark headlight apertures (which incorporate air intakes as well as lighting elements) are very color sensitive, the metallic white of our test car giving the 720S a deadeyed look that is evocative of a fish market.

The well-trimmed cabin is supremely functional, but it lacks much of the showbiz of flashier rivals. Getting in and out is easier with the 720S’s lower sills and wider-opening doors, which now gain a top hinge thanks to the composite A-pillars. Visibility is good enough to justify McLaren’s frequent assertion that it was inspired by jet-fighter design. The thin front pillars dramatically improve the forward field of view, and new glazed C-pillars pretty much eliminate the over-the-shoulder blind spots that have defined mid-engined supercars since they first emerged from the primordial ooze. Switchgear has been simplified, with climate controls moved from the doors to the central touchscreen (which lacks the sensitivity and usability of more mainstream systems). There is some supercar theater in the form of the power-tilting digital instrument display; it folds away and is replaced with minimal rev-counter and speed-readout information when the car is switched to Track mode.

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Playing in the Bandwidth

While we’ve previously been impressed by the dynamic differences that McLaren has been able to instill into models based on a similar core architecture, the 720S has pulled off an even neater trick: combining the virtues of the entire range. This is a car that’s as civilized as the 570GT while being faster than the seminal 675LT. In bandwidth, it’s the equivalent of one of those apocalypse-defying server farms buried under a Colorado mountain.

Yet initial impressions are that it has spent too long at one of those posh English schools and emerged too refined. The powertrain and handling mode switches have both gained a new Comfort setting in place of the previous Normal, and this delivers as promised. It offers a pliant ride, even on the lowest-quality Italian tarmac we could find, plus an engine that provides solid real-world performance without raising its voice and a race-spec dual-clutch automatic gearbox that does a good impression of a slushy torque-converter automatic. Cruising is freakishly quiet; even expansion joints on the Italian autostrada barely interrupt the calm of the cabin. Indeed, the absence of other distractions is probably the only reason that slight wind noise from the rear of the doors is obvious.

Fear not, however, as the Mr. Hyde side of the 720S’s split personality is never more than a flexed toe away. The V-8 takes a fraction of a second to gather momentum, but once the turbos come on boost it pulls like Jupiter’s gravity, pretty much regardless of gear or speed. The engine is happy to pull all the way to its 8500-rpm limiter—deliriously so—but the level of thrust and the volume of noise it makes mean it’s hard not to find yourself upshifting embarrassingly early. Well, that and the risk of being arrested, of course. McLaren claims the 720S can get to 124 mph from launch in just 7.8 seconds, and as such it could break the highest speed limit in the United States in less than five seconds from a standing start. But while the 720S sounds better than most of its predecessors, with a burbling idle and an angry exhaust note to offset the induction whoosh at higher revs, it still lacks both the vocal range of the Ferrari 488 and the operatic wail of the naturally aspirated Lamborghini Huracán.

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Grip levels on the Pirelli P Zero tires are enormous, yet the 720S doesn’t feel inert when being driven at something close to legally acceptable road speeds. The steering’s weight is lighter than the supercar norm, but McLaren’s decision to employ electrohydraulically assisted steering means it retains much more of the sort of low-speed feel that electrically assisted systems tend to filter out as unwanted noise. While most of the messages the steering sends are encouragement to go faster, it’s impressively talkative even when trundling through town.

To experience the 720S at more than a scant percentage of its potential, you’re going to have to find either an unrestricted autobahn or a racetrack. Which is why McLaren offered us laps of the Vallelunga circuit near Rome to allow for a fuller assessment of the car. Track use confirmed that the 720S can compress Vallelunga’s longest straight as easily as it squeezes internal organs, developing borderline uncomfortable levels of grip both laterally and longitudinally. While the 720S can’t match the hair-trigger responses of the previous 675LT track special, it feels much more stable under braking and less skittish under power, lapping at huge speed without breaking a sweat. Most drivers are certain to run out of talent long before the car does; it takes extreme abuse to persuade the front end to use up its grip, and the stability control does a brilliant job at finding adhesion for the engine’s horses. For those looking for more excitement, McLaren has added a Variable Drift Control system, although in our limited exposure to this technology it seemed to intervene too aggressively to allow more than small slides to develop; fully deactivating the stability control would be much more fun.

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Haydn Baker, the man who led development of the 720S, said his baby is quicker around a circuit than the 675LT was—exceeding the original engineering brief for the project—and admitted that it’s actually faster than the almighty 903-hp P1 around most tracks. That fact alone pretty much justifies the $288,845 price of admission.

More McLaren-ness

McLaren has never been short of engineering talent, but it has struggled to deliver on the sort of intense emotional appeal that supercar buyers look for. The 720S has made dramatic progress in that direction, being a much more involving and more exciting car than the 650S was—and a much better-looking one, too. It’s a technical tour de force, a towering achievement of what we’re going to describe as McLaren-ness: the make-it-better, make-it-faster ethos that has guided the brand since its foundation more than five decades ago. While it might not incite quite the level of passione as its most obvious Italian rivals, we have no doubt that it will hang with them, if not outright spank them, on the track.

 

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