philcUK:... not overly sure why it's another Autocar 'exclusive' though when the BBC had all this covered a day before you. ho hum.
EVO had this up as another exclusive a day earlier too. No matter, though, because no one forces you to read this, you know, and so it's only a pedant who worries himself over journalistic accuracy and all that worthiness. Who cares?
marktobin: Front of the car looks very Ferrari, & then things just get poor around the back.
I don't think they've copied the looks at all. The Ferrari is not particularly striking, but it has its merits. The McLaren's body is at best bland and at worst ugly. The worst aspect is the double-slot air intake: it is an attempt to add an interesting surface, but aesthetically it doesn't work. The more I look at the rear, the more it appeals, but viewed from the rear three-quarter angle, the line from the A-pillar back along to the rear haunches gives an overall impression of being awkwardly resolved. The whole thing smacks just a smidge of a refined kit car.
In this car's body design, I think McLaren have betrayed the fact that they aren't particularly artistic; yet they've tried to make this car more than just a state-of-the-art functional object (as the F1 was) and tried to invest more in the value of form. The good thing is that where McLaren, at its core, does not appear to have an eye for beauty, they do engineer things like perhaps nobody else can; with a sublime attention to detail and mechanical development.
For me, it's a bit of a shame but no disaster that they've tried and partly failed to produce something good-looking, but that will hopefully be an irrelevance when people experience the chassis and engine. If the car is flawed and not class-leading as a driving machine, McLaren will have made an unfortunate boob. I doubt that will be the case, though.
In all but its visual impact and artistry, the McLaren MC-NUTS-N-BOLTS-WD40 is a worthy market rival to the Ferrari 458 Italia, and now creates a ghastly dilemma for anybody who is thinking of buying the Ferrari. Whoever came up with the name, though, must be ever-so-slightly autistic.
