Originally Posted by
f6fhellcat13
I think the MP4-12C is the victim, like the Bangle-styled BMWs, of a collective hysteria from the journo crowd. The post-Bangle BMWs were praised for not being designed by him by the pundits, yet they still looked like shit. I would imagine the emotional content of a 458 is little different that the McLaren's; a few "Italian" touches here and there, and voilà, the Ferrari is somehow a million times more the drivers' car. Having driven neither, I obviously can't comment from a position of knowledge, but I would suspect that, in the interest of provocative headlines and with the thought that the Ferrari is a certain way and the McLaren another having been seeded before driving either, that they might be exaggerating.
Lest you think I'm immune to Italian (no quotes) charms; a few weeks ago I was given a ride in a GTV6 and, maybe due to an exhaust leak and carbon monoxide in the cabin, I spent the whole hour and-a-bit of our journey giggling. I wasn't even driving and it was some of the most fun driving I've had.
For the record: I'm not a big fan of the McLaren. Something about performance cars with half-hearted turbocharging gets my goat. I don't mind when a Volvo has a light-pressure turbo, but when a supercar is only developing 150bhp/l when the naturally-aspirated Ferrari is making 130, something is wrong. If a supercar is turboed it should make a million bhp/l, of which I think modern technology is entirely capable. Give it a turbocharged engine, not a naturally-aspirated one with turboes. The other thing, very-similarly, that irks me about it is that they can and will turn up the boost to extend the model range, and in the world of price-is-little-object I don't like artificial model hierarchies like that. The Enzo was not faster than the 430 because corners were cut on the 430; the Enzo and the 430 fell into a natural hierarchy. One was a supercar with a mid-sized V8 and light chassis, the other a hypercar with a stronger heavier chassis and a big ol' V12 dynamo. On the flip side, people claimed the Cayman was dulled-down to avoid stepping on the 911's toes. While I'm not sure I buy this, this is a good example, if true, of an artificial hierarchy.
So there you have it: in my computer chair I'm impressed with neither, but if you have a set of 458 or 12C keys burning a hole in your pocket, there's no way in hell I'm saying no.