Supercar shootout – Ferrari 458 Speciale versus McLaren 650S

McLaren could only supply the 650S as a Spider for this comparison test. Thankfully, we know how insignificant a dynamic compromise comes from taking the roof off Woking’s carbonfibre-tubbed machine.

Test experience with the 12C has shown that this car loses nothing detectable from trading its fixed roof for a folding metal version; nothing on handling precision or ride refinement or cabin isolation or even on carrying capacity. The Spider’s simply better than the coupé because it’s got yet another string to an already packed bow.

It’s remarkable how much extra presence and visual impact McLaren has given this car with the P1-inspired styling tweaks that mark a 650S out from a 12C. The new front-end treatment in particular socks you straight between the eyes when you first see it, in a way the 12C never threatened to do. That new carbonfibre front splitter bristles with aggression but also looks functional. And that’s because it generates more high-speed downforce for the 650S than the 12C ever had.

Parked side by side, a 458 Italia out-shines a 12C, but the 650S isn’t so easily upstaged. In fact, it isn’t upstaged full stop. Despite enlarging the various air scoops all over the 458, fitting new ones in the bonnet and rear deck, littering the front bumper with sections of razor-like black wire mesh and fitting a rear diffuser that looks like it belongs on a Le Mans prototype, Ferrari has had the tables turned on it by Woking here. The 650S now makes the 458 – even the Speciale – look reserved, unadventurous, ordinary. Relatively, but unmistakably so.

The Ferrari’s cabin is a delicious monument to a singular purpose. Bedecked in carbonfibre, it’s missing all sorts: stereo, armrests, a normal centre console, even a glovebox, all notable by their absence You can’t help letting out an excited giggle in the face of that sort of commitment. 

And yet when you’re setting out from, say, the Brecon Beacons to Castle Combe circuit at the end of a long day, it doesn’t take long to get slightly jealous of the guy in the McLaren – the guy who’s got metres of downy Alcantara to stroke, a voice-operated navigation system to follow, a cruise control to set and a DAB radio with which to tune into the traffic reports. In the real world, niceties like that matter. 

As does material quality. Ferrari has never been brilliant at this; McLaren’s been good at it from day one, and is getting better. Which is why the worst, flimsiest fittings and switches on the 650S look and feel better than the best ones on the Speciale.

Read the McLaren 650S review

Despite its deficits to the McLaren on visual impact and static refinement, the Speciale undoubtedly makes you more excited to drive it. McLaren will work for decades to develop a brand that means half as much to people as Ferrari’s, and reputations built on cars as epic as 430 Scuderia, 599 GTO and 360 Challenge Stradale in recent years alone merit that initial priority.

More excited still as you begin to punt it around at low speed. Not that you ‘punt’ a Speciale. The steering is quite light but very direct and, relative to a standard Italia, benefits straight away from the incredible precision, response and contact patch feel that only a sticky set of Cup tyres can provide. Just guiding the car out of a motorway service station feels otherworldly. It's less like driving a family saloon than it is flying a helicopter.

With the Ferrari’s ‘manettino’ drive mode controller set to Race, the V8’s bark is at its loudest – which is loud, even bumbling along at 60mph in top. Two flicks of the left-hand paddle and a flex of your right foot brings a voice of righteous oblivion out of it. Response is instant, but the violence of the car’s performance needs revs and road space to build.

The Speciale is always quick, but only savagely so between 7000rpm and a deafening, sublimely excessively 9000rpm.

Meantime, life in the 650S is more effortless. It's less rousing but no less fast. McLaren’s new pistons and cylinder head for the Ricardo-built V8 haven’t made it any more of a virtuoso. The whistles and flutters of forced induction remain, audibly at least, like salt and pepper on supermarket sirloin. While the car growls and bellows at times, it never sings. 

But it shifts. You need to contrive a problem for this engine to negotiate; you must go out of your way to put a hurdle in its path in order to find much turbo lag. Full throttle in manual mode in a very high gear and from very low revs will do it – but frankly, so what? In anything approaching normal use, the engine gives you excellent response, as well as the kind lower mid-range torque that has only very recently been invented in Emilia-Romagna.

The Macca’s urge isn’t served up quite as sharply as the Ferrari’s, but at pretty much any speed the 650S feels slightly more potent. Pulling hard from 3500rpm, its swell of thrust makes it feel much quicker. 

So far, so even

If this test had been played out entirely on the road, it might have had a different winner. The Speciale’s grip and almost scary directness make it a thoroughly addictive treat for the thrill-seeker, with impressive civility at least in terms of rolling refinement. But the 650S feels like the bigger dynamic achievement – on the road. 

The Ferrari is taut-riding and a little bit jostling on a bad surface at low speed. Otherwise, it’s remarkably supple. The damper tuning is clever enough to allow a bit of initial compliance but then gives totally unflinching support under load. In short, the Speciale’s seems like an honest, natural chassis – albeit one with superpowers in terms of grip and alertness.

The McLaren’s chassis, by contrast, is utter voodoo. It never seems to react to two similarly sized bumps in quite the same way, ever softening and stiffening underneath you by tiny degrees. And yet the result is uncanny and the primary ride is brilliant. It’s slightly softer than the Ferrari’s, permitting more vertical movement but only the merest, gentlest bobbing gait, and always immaculately managed.

The McLaren steers better than the Ferrari, with a bit more weight and a slightly slower and more intuitive pace allied to more overall feel. It’s by a country mile the more mechanically refined car, because the Speciale is willfully unrefined. It does so many things so well, in fact, that what you’re about to read feels fraudulent to write.

Because somehow the Speciale overcomes that breadth of ability with one knockout trick: by being absolutely stunning when driven fast. Really fast. You can’t drive it fast enough on the road to plumb the depths of its genius, so you go to a track. When you arrive, the car fails a noise test – so you appeal to the marshals and get on anyway. You’re a Ferrari owner; these things are expected.