Almost two years after its launch, the McLaren 720S remains the best supercar in the world – some achievement from a company that still hasn't even been making cars for a decade.
Even in McLaren's earlier days, when it wasn’t quite on top of the world, it made a darn good convertible supercar with its 650S Spider, and the 12C Spider before it.
The strength of McLaren’s carbonfibre tub meant a conversion from coupé to convertible could be made without sacrificing stiffness and adding little weight, thus avoiding the main pitfalls that have nearly always historically made a convertible supercar a slower, heavier and worse-looking version of the coupé from which it's derived.
Now the 720S Spider has arrived to carry on that rich open-top bloodline. Its official brief is to be the ‘most complete convertible supercar’, and if it’s as good as its credentials suggest, it should be the more desirable version of the world’s best supercar, and the one you’d probably buy. The de facto world’s best supercar, even.
How does the Spider differ from the standard 720S?
Those credentials, then. McLaren’s carbonfibre Monocage II structure has been adapted to now be called Monocage II-S. That essentially means the coupé’s dramatic dihedral doors have been lost due to the fact a retractable one-piece hard-top roof needs to be added, but, in doing so, all of the structural strength has been retained. No fixed roof means the addition of a new rollover protection system, bonded to the chassis, made from carbonfibre and 6.8kg lighter than the 650S Spider’s steel construction.
