It is a furious car, the McLaren, the most uncompromised of these three. A bare 40 miles later, with the million-pound Ferrari ticking its heat away in a wide Italian lay-by on the bottom of a hairpin-infected back road, I’m convinced LaFerrari is the greatest car in the world. But it’s time to get on with it. And as a component, the P1 asks much of the driver, but if you’re on your game it’ll give you greater thrills, richer memories, deeper exhilaration. Because at Geneva 2013 we get the definitive version of the McLaren P1 and the Ferrari LaFerrari, to add to what we already knew about the Porsche 918 Spyder.Right then. The McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 Spyder face off for the first time anywhere in the world. But you can’t deny it’s near perfection, though. First one of these three manufacturers to give us a drive wins our hearts. A downsized turbo motor would have fitted in well with the fact that the 918 is the most hybrid-emphasized car of the three. Such a state of tune loses lose mid-range torque but the electric motor should help fill in.Porsche could have gone for a turbo. To my mind, it’s the least attractive of the three in all but Track mode, with a sinister aesthetic that I find awkward and disturbing – but that might just be a flashback to Spa. Which in a car like this, you cannot be. Hyperbole can be a dangerous thing, but in this case, it's entirely justified. With the extra hybrid componentry in the Porsche comes extra weight. What a noise. On tight hairpins, the 4wd system proves decidedly rear-wheel drive, but it’s still so fast and makes an unbelievable noise. What we're looking at is the distillation of the intellectual might of fast-car super boffins. But it’s also not completely bonkers. Better not crash them, then.First up, and after the LaF, I find the 918’s seats incredibly vertical.
Quite right too, most would say, and I’m tempted to agree, but just as the BMW i8 feels as if it’s moved the sports-car game on, I’m tempted to think the LaFerrari looks backwards rather than forwards, pines for the old days, is an end rather than a beginning. Conscious today really isn’t the day to make an apologetic phone call, it’s time to focus.The route to the meeting point showcases the P1’s talents, and the initial thing that strikes is its tractability. It tears chunks out of roads, chunters, whooshes, crackles and spits flame. And it even has a cupholder, a targa top and a healthy margin of price difference. LaFerrari wins. Porsche is less strong, McLaren a bit unknown (F1’s sell high now, but it didn’t sell out when new). Mind you that’s not to say it doesn’t also speak of function: the nose and doors give the impression that air moves through the car as much as the car moves through the air.
God, it’s exciting. A quick run-around these amazing cars. This service is provided by Disqus and is subject to their 2020’s most exciting electric city cars are here. It suffers the most road noise, bombards you with a barrage of noises that don’t so much prickle your nape as threaten to rip your spine out, and has the most confusing e-system controls that include drag reduction and an IPAS boost button. share. Crikey it knows well enough how to do them.
[Read more about Speed Week in issue 29 of TopGear Singapore]Local and international automotive news, test drive reports, and everything in between. Unless you’re mindful of their different makers’ philosophies and passions and proclivities, you’ll never get a feel for how far these cars diverge.Just look at them, for a start. A faster 458 Speciale, fabulously honed, but deliberately masking the benefits the electrics bring, the e-motor no more than backing singer to the V12 vocalist. The three most wanted hybrid hypercars on the planet, tested together for the first time anywhere in the world. You’ll get out of it with an inexplicable thirst and a desire to call your relatives to reassure them you’re OK. You won’t be able to, because you’ll be trembling. It no longer races that layout in Grand Prix but a V12 remains the most widely understood shorthand for Italian supercar.
The Porsche €768,000 or about £664,000. While the Ferrari’s naturally aspirated delivery picks you up and carries you along, the McLaren’s seems to leave you behind, clinging on, fighting for breath in the torque torrent.You can feel the electricity torque filling the turbo lag, but when the afterburners ignite, they hit so hard you’re not sure what to do. Not all of it all of the time, but get it right, and this is a car to end all things. There’s no respite. 41 comments. So it ought to be lighter. Here, in the dry, I swear the P1 is the fastest of all, Race mode or no. It keys itself into the tarmac better than either rival, finds traction where the McLaren squirms and the Porsche skitters. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes.
The 918 will be between 1600-1700kg. And that’s why I’d have it. But it never completely manages to hide its weight and bottoms out on some more extreme cambers, which is jarring and expensive. Is this the moment EVs go mainstream?Everything you need to know about the McLaren F1 successor from the man behind itBBC Studios is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC).No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. All have carbonfibre bodies and all of them take active aerodynamics into new and brain-scramblingly complex places.But they all look very different. But it’s LaFerrari’s ability to let you focus on the job in hand that is its trump card. It’s less flash than the Ferrari, less ostentatious, more considered. One has turbos, two don’t. Are the Porsche and Ferrari aspirated engines more of a draw than the McLaren’s turbo?And what floats your boat?
But it feels heavier and more controlled than the competition. Ferrari’s record is sky-high there because its limited editions sell out fastest. Yes, the 918 fills the brief Porsche set itself to the brim: it feels like the most rounded car here and is the most technologically exciting and multidimensional. Less aggressive than the McLaren. In the P1 and 918, you choose your mode of attack through a number of different strategies.