The Opinion: Why McLaren's MP4-12C isn’t a real supercar

On the basis that we have just published Autoviva’s Top Ten Italian Cars I have been thinking about supercars rather a lot over the last week or so.

Yesterday I was walking through a rather  area in central London with a friend when we stumbled upon a Lamborghini Aventador. It looked fantastic, painted in pearlescent white under the streetlamps, mean and purposeful, with angular lines in all the right places. I suggested that it even represented good value at a smidge under ¼ million pounds.

We had been discussing McLaren’s MP4-12C only five minutes earlier and my friend asked me which I’d rather have, especially on the basis that the McLaren looks positively cheap, or good value if you want to be less brutal, next to the bombastic Lamborghini. It was at this point that I observed that the McLaren and the Lamborghini aren’t direct competitors, indeed the McLaren isn’t a supercar I contended.

It is very difficult to be clear cut about these divisions, but I will try. The Aventador is the entry level supercar. To my mind it can compete against and sit comfortably next to the Pagani’s and Bugatti’s of this world. It can do this by virtue of its position at the top of the Lamborghini tree, the fact it has outrageous scissor doors and due, not least, to its sheer width, despite the fact that it’s actually pretty easy to drive.

So, where does that leave the Lamborghini Gallardo, Ferrari 458 and McLaren MP4-12C? I believe they are super-sports cars. Clearly they sit above Porsche’s Cayman and even a junior 911 in power, presence and price, but they are just slightly too…..easy to use to sit on the big boys table. That, in the case of the Gallardo is the job of its big brother, and in the case of the 458 and MP4-12C it will be the job of the forthcoming ‘halo’ models.

Other articles from this series:

The Opinion: Toyota GT86 ‘IT’S ALL ABOUT BALANCE’

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The Opinion: Porsche Boxster 2.7 ‘It’s hard to fault’

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The Opinion: McLaren MP4-12C: Complex Like A Fine Wine

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