The McLaren 720S Is a Goddamn Picasso on Wheels
The McLaren 720S is unlike any other high-performance car. It is not about perfection or value or practicality or style. It’s about purity of pleasure.
The British company’s new supercar is a thing of beauty, a goddamn work of art. If you could see a cut-away illustration of all its inner workings, it would reduce you to childlike wonder. There’s the hydraulically-interlinked dampers, the complex suspension kinematics, the intricate carbon-fibre monocoque, the way the bodywork is shrink-wrapped around everything. Compared to the 650S, which the 720 replaces, 91 per cent of the parts are new.
Even by supercar standards, the 720 is as pure as they come. Tip into a corner at 200 km/h and you’d swear you can feel the rubber contact patches of the Pirelli tires as they meet tarmac. In the time it took you to read that sentence, the carbon brakes could have brought the car from 200 km/h to a complete stop. Driving the 720 is an intense experience. And that’s the point.
It’s like meditation, I imagine: such a pure thing that it focuses the doer, the driver, on the task at hand. Be here now. Because frankly, if you’re not, you may well crash. Is this mindfulness? Supercar as self-help? Who cares.
Specs
Engine
4.0-litre twin-turbo V8
Power
710 hp
0-100 km/h:
2.9 seconds
Price
$312,500
