If flashy-exoticar curb appeal and organ-bruising ride are at the top of your supercar requirements, cross the McLaren 12C Spider off your list. From some angles, the car might be mistaken for a $25,000 Scion FR-S, while from the driver's seat it can seem as tame and relaxed as a garden-variety Honda Accord.
But you'll want in if owning a car that is a racetrack fiend, draws its technology from Formula One racing and traces its lineage directly back to the McLaren F1—one of the world's greatest road-going sports cars—sounds appealing.
What you'll get is the latest road car from British automaker and racing specialist McLaren: a retractable hardtop version of the 12C coupe that marked the brand's return to the road when it was introduced in 2011. Like with the 12C, you won't get a lot of unnecessary jewelry, what McLaren design director Frank Stephenson dismissed as “styling fripperies.”
“As with all McLarens, the 12C Spider is a racing car at heart,” said Stephenson. “It has the same timeless elegant style that distinguishes the 12C, but the added romance of open-top driving.”
McLaren managing director Antony Sheriff said little modification was needed to create the 12C Spider from the 12C coupe.
“The 12C Spider is not a converted version of the 12C,” said Sheriff. “The two were conceived and developed at the same time, alongside each other.”
The Spider employs the identical carbon-fiber MonoCell tub as the coupe and weighs just 88 pounds more than the coupe, all attributable to the heavier composite roof structure and its associated mechanisms, including a single hydraulic pump mounted as low in the vehicle as possible. The roof raises and lowers automatically in 17 seconds, at speeds up to 19 mph.
Everything McLaren has learned since putting the coupe on the market has been incorporated into the Spider, including a series of software upgrades that boost power of the mid-mounted, twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V8 by 25 hp to 616 hp, sharpen throttle and transmission response, solve electrical glitches that had threatened confidence in the car's everyday durability, and improve the audio of both the exhaust sounds and the Meridian sound system. (Coupe owners will be happy to know that all upgrades built into the Spider are being retrofitted to the coupes, starting this month.)
The Spider retains the coupe's ability to perform on road and track, without any loss of performance except top speed, which drops 3 mph to an aerodynamically limited 204 mph. McLaren pegs the official 0-to-62-mph time (on Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires) at 3.1 seconds (same as the coupe); we have no doubt that same interval applies for 0-to-60 mph on stock Pirelli P Zero rubber.
Driving the 12C Spider, first of all, is an aural cornucopia. Once the top drops, the sound of the high-performance powertrain envelops the passenger space from behind and the side, echoing off any nearby structure or vehicle. The audio feast is aided by the Intake Sound Generator that is also found in the coupe. The ISG, adjustable to various levels depending on driver desire, ports engine noise directly into the cabin, abetting the underlying mechanical growl of the boosted powertrain and the always audible exhaust report. Under acceleration, there's a satisfying wail that urges one to push for the top of the 8,500-rpm range, while abrupt off-throttle produces an equally enjoyable exhaust echo accompanied by the percussive “chock-chock-chock” of the turbo wastegates bleeding off suddenly unneeded manifold pressure.
Though top down is obviously the preferred mode of travel, McLaren engineers also added a power-deploying rear window, which functions as a wind baffle in top-down driving but also as a large port to the sounds of the engine bay and exhaust roar when the top is in place. And unlike most rear windows that produce severe cabin-vacuum pressure, sucking in dust and fumes from behind the vehicle, or conversely sucking everything from inside out, the aerodynamics of the 12C body provide perfect pressure equilibrium so that all that enters the cabin is auditory joy.
On the road, the car can be as docile or as demonic as one might wish, simply by dialing up differing settings on the central control panel. Options include normal, sport and track modes, independently selectable for both chassis setup and powertrain. As a result, the driver may select a softer ride for bumpy urban streets, while retaining the lightning-quick power delivery and reflexes of the engine and seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. We can't think of a situation in which one might choose to rein in the powertrain while running with the chassis set for maximum track performance, however.
All this comes with a caveat: Even when punched up to max performance settings, the 12C is an inherently tractable machine, offering a level of drivability that seems almost sacrilegious in supercar circles.
Isn't a car of this nature, especially one with the world-renowned racing provenance of a builder such as McLaren, supposed to be stunning to gaze upon but an inhospitable, brutal beast should one dare test its limits? Not the 12C Spider, where man and machine meet in a common goal of launching ever quicker, pushing ever faster, cornering ever tighter until one party or the other declares “enough already”—and more often than not that's the one doing the prodding.
In track mode, hammering the accelerator is rewarded with instant engine response, but with such smooth downshifting by the appropriately named Seamless Shift Gearbox, it's imperceptible—at least until the moment when acceleration and g-forces reach one's personal maximum.
Braking, provided by 14.5-inch fronts along with 13.8-inch rears and aided by an automatically deploying airfoil Airbrake (developed for Formula One use and since banned from the series), is up to the challenge. In the right hands, the McLaren's stopping power will have you hanging from your seatbelt harness and you'll be thankful the webbing is there to contain your personal momentum.
Cornering is aided by uncannily accurate steering and multiple geniuses, including active racing-style dampers, active braking (also developed for F1 use) and some of Pirelli's finest rubber. It inspires driver confidence past the point of traction loss, with zero understeer and any oversteer readily corrected with a quick flick of the wheel without any apparent loss of momentum.
If your pocketbook can support it, we can only think of one thing better than a McLaren 12C coupe, and that'd be the 12C Spider. With the retractable hardtop securely in place, the car looks nearly identical to the coupe and retains virtually all of the coupe's performance capability; top down, it's an open-air delight at any speed.
2013 McLaren 12C Spider
On Sale: December/January
Base Price: $263,250
Drivetrain: 3.8-liter, 616-hp, 442-lb-ft twin-turbocharged V8; RWD, seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox
Curb Weight: 3,027 lb (dry), 3,288 lb (est)
0-60 MPH: 3.1 sec
Fuel Economy: 24.2 mpg (U.K. test), 23 mpg (U.S. est)
Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20121112/carreviews/121119974#ixzz2CJtib53A
