tommallett

I don’t know what was happening this morning on my way to work but there seemed to be a plethora of interesting metal passing my carbon fibre and alloy machine (read bicycle).

They included a rather nice Porsche 911 (993) Carrera 4, a 996 Turbo and a tasty looking CL63.

However, the two cars that caught my eye, perhaps rather unsurprisingly were a black (nero Mr Ferrari) Ferrari 458 and a grey McLaren MP4 12C. I think it is fair to say that in the style stakes most people give the Ferrari the nod over the English upstart, and they’d probably be right.

That said I’ve seen a good number of 458s on the road now and driven a few of them too. It’s been out since 2009 and with Ferrari production worldwide looking like it will exceed 7,000 this year that means there are plenty of examples of its most popular model cruising the streets.

The McLaren on the other hand has only been around since 2011 and McLaren don’t sell as many cars as Ferrari either.

Maybe it is relevant to say at this point that Ferraris have always tended to shout ‘look at me’ while McLaren exudes an air of cool efficiency, even down to the McLaren technology centre in Woking, or its silver and chrome racing cars. Ferraris meanwhile are red. Always have been, always will be (I accept the yellow thing, but let me have my line please!)

Anyway, the Ferrari certainly didn’t look particularly exciting with it’s black on black colour scheme while the McLaren looked stealthy, efficient and just a little bit different in grey. It even had a decent exhaust note – McLaren has worked on that one.

Just occasionally cars grow on you, and the McLaren has certainly done that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect (http://www.autoviva.com/news/the_opinion_mclaren_mp4_12c_complex_like_a_fine_wi/3367) but it is looking better with age. It now feels fortuitous that I picked the ‘fine wine’ headline for my review!