458 Italia vs McLaren MP4 Blighty - The UK press decides

Now I realize from following this thread that you believe everything Mclaren say but I really didn't think anyone would be gullible enough to believe that one.

Jonathan

 

No, I believe it. Electronics are always the great unknown. It's the same in aircraft. When you look at Mercedes' drop in reliability, it's almost 100% caused by electronic problems.

 

Well you're right in that I hear the delays are due to reliability issues.

Jonathan

 

Looking at acceleration results in new EVO, that new press car is actually slower than original 458 tested earlier by EVO.

So it doesn´t seem it is 458 challenge car in disguise or 458 Scuderia in testing as claimed by McLaren fans.

The improvement at Bedford comes probably from Super Sport tires.

 

I' dont see any EVO article scans yet but someone told me new Evo issue copied the previous acceleration data. (EVO 148), Are you sure they repeated instrumental measurement again ?
Another point is the measured kerb weight (1469 kg)
Yes Pilot supersport are better in comparsion to PS2 (see my post #239)

 

original 458 test by EVO (458 license plate DP544TV)

0-30mph - 1,6s
0-60mph - 3,2s
0-100mph - 6,8s
0-150mph - 15,2s

new 458 test (458 license plate DP599TV)

0-30mph - 1,5s
0-60mph - 3,2s
0-100mph - 6,8s
0-150mph - 15,8s

 

Just reading through the verdict in EVO. Not one tester would choose the 12C.

Henry Catchpole writes -

"We've been amazed and impressed by a lot of the things the MP4-12C has done over the last few days , but I don't think anyone reached the end of a drive, however fast or even sideways, grinning. I certainly never found myself buzzing with excitement during a drive, wanting to bottle the moment.

Chris Harris hit the spot in his initial review (EVO 155) when he talked about a curious lack of emotion, and he adds that despite being a serial supercar buyer, in the months since he's never once found himself longing to own one.

Emotion. Ferrari's trump card".

Mclaren fans had best strike Harris off their christmas card list now after expecting him to side against the 458 after his piece on Jalopnik.

And Andy Wallace of Le Mans winning fame who was part of the test team says "The best car is the bright red Italian one, but could you drive around in a Ferrari every day? ..... Aw, hell yes, I suppose you could!"

 

What's the point of not believing it? They are saying the US cars are not delayed, so it will come out very quickly if they are lying or not.

 

And here is the cover of car magazine.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

None of this should come as any surprise, though, considering that Ron told assemble journalists at the launch that he could show them a graph that proved his car was the best. And it would seem, from this thread at least, that he knows his target audience very well. Certainly better than he knows how to build a supercar.

 

I suggest you reread the jalopnik piece. Harris claimed that Ferrari was in the habit of supplying two cars for tests: one for acceleration and one for track work. Given that EVO does not let them do it anymore, it is entirely consistent with having the car optimized for one kind of test. The immortal issue of a sudden 76 kg weight drop is still awaiting an explanation.

 

NOne of us expected HArris to like the car, since he complained from early on about the sound and lack of hooning ability (LSD).

It is the Ferrari fans who somehow assumed that Harris' complaining about Ferrari cheating is equivalent to hating the cars or being bought off by McLaren. The cognitive dissonance must be exploding some heads as we speak.

No, I know, now! Ferrari simply bought Harris back, so all is good in the world.

 

I agree. I can't help but feel that there will be people in the development team in the MTC sitting reading these reviews and thinking "we told you so Ron" about making their car too technically perfect and not having any excitement factor. I doubt they'll be brave enough to say it to him though

It's one thing to need the best technical car to cross the finish line at a GP but quite a different formula required to encourage the paying public to write out a cheque for a road car.

 

Will all due respect krzys YOU may not have but there are certainly a few who did and have highlighted his expertise behind the wheel and wide experience of the competition. He made it clear after his intitial test that he'd wait to see what the final customer cars were like before making his mind up. That was the right thing for him to do IMHO as the first reviews were done driving the XP pre production cars and gave Mclaren some valuable feedback and a window to make some changes to this like exhuast sound etc.

I'd agree it really doesn't matter except for the fact that his comments on Jalopnik have regularly been used as ammunition and treated as gospel in the other direction on many, many forums. It therefore is something of a surprise that he picks the car from the very manufacturer he accussed of misleading the public. If his words were righteous and undeniable when he criticised Ferrari why are they no longer righteous when he places the 12C behind the 458?

 

I forgot that you believe everything Mclaren say US cars were always going to be later than European cars anyway. It has already come out very quickly that they are - let's be charitable - stretching the truth.

Jonathan

 

Well, OK, I am not sure what everybody thought, but he was very lukewarm from the very beginning. If you read his February review, he did not like the look, the sound, the lack of LSD and made some rather pointed comments about Ron and McLaren's attitude. Yes, he kept his final judgment for later.

As to the issue with Jalopnik piece, notice it goes both ways. Many here jumped on Harris as a hater, even though he clearly professed his love for the cars. Now, the question is: will people here give more credibility to what he wrote when he proved himself (again) not to be a McLAren fanboy?

 

About what?

 

krzys I don't think many on here actually doubted Chris Harris believed what he said. In fact on many posts on this thread I think several people have gone to great lengths to say all manufacturers cheat at tests. By the look of things with Mclaren being the only manufacturer to provide Car with a different car for their track test compared to the one used for the road test I think that says all you need to know about "optimising" cars for certain types of test

Jaguar did it with the E-type, Lamborghini with the Miura, Countach and countless others etc etc. It's nothing new. It's the summation of the way the car drives, handles and the way it puts a smile on the driver's face that counts most for the majority of buyers and it's at that hurdle the 12C has fallen short in all of the reviews.

I note that some of the driving gods on mclarenlife are already talking about massive BHP conversions to the 12C in any case which is somewhat amusing when real race drivers are saying the current car has plenty. It must therefore be irrelevant to them that the car came behind the 458 as their versions will be much, much faster

 

Well, arguing that all mfrs cheat is precisely equivalent to an attempt not to listen to what Harris is saying. We all know people (mfrs) will tweak, hot up their testers and so on and so forth. However, HArris claims something very different: Ferrari is engaged in a wholesale effort to rig all comparison tests to an extent no other mfr is. It's the scale of the effort which is in question. Ferrari actively tries to prevent mags from testing customer cars, for example. It is outrageous and very suspicious.

I understand that majority of people do not really care about the tests, but I do. I want to be sure that the car they are testing is one I can buy for reasons I explained before. I would love to get my hands on 1469 kg Italia, but I doubt it's available anywhere.

As to McLaren optimisation, I ignore times not done by independent testers.

 

Strange logic there. I know exactly what he suggested . Perhaps you may be choosing to misread things. With a reputation for racing pedigree that is jealously guarded, Ferrari want to ensure that any car tested is presented in it's best possible condition. A customer owned car may (however unlikely) have a fault, be on worn tyres, incorrectly run in etc etc. When road test times are made so important by people just like you it's little wonder that a manufacturer of performance cars does this when their volumes are so low and their reputation is on the line. Once a car passes out of the manfacturers hands and into those of a customer it no longer has control of the quality of that vehicle. What has just happened with Mclaren is testimony to what hapens overnight to a reputation when test results go wrong from "poorly prepared" cars Expectations of Ferrari from the market are sky high after all.

Now you'll counter with Porsche don't do it etc etc. Maybe they do and maybe they don't but at their production volumes and with their long established customer base who are generally a very different type of buyer (911 turbo buyers being the exception as they are closer to Ferrari or Lambo buyers than GT2/3 model buyers) they tend to under declare and over deliver on their GT cars as they have the benefit of road cars that are closely developed using knowledge from the Cup cars. They also carry out far more development miles pre production than any other manufacturer (prior to mclaren) so have a wealth of data experience.

Porsche also always provide the press with test cars for new models and magazines only use customer cars where short run models are no longer in production or on the press fleet. When was the last time you saw a gropu test of new models by a magazine where the test car was not supplied by the manufacturer? Did Harris ever give concrete examples of that happening?? I think not

 

This is very charitable interpretation, bu another one is that customer cars are not very close to the test cars and that's exactly what Harris is saying. Ultimately, I want actual customer cars tested not specially prepared, reputation-maintaining "clean" examples. Temptation is obvious here for mfrs and it seem Ferrari goes all in.

It's Porsche and Lambo (as Chilton says) who don't do those things. Some production runs of Porsche specials are easily smaller than Italia's, but you don't here about them barring people from testing customer cars.

Sorry, but the conclusion here is pretty obvious.

 

Aren't all McLaren's still pre-production and thereby not representive of customer cars?

 

Funnily enough, the track car at CAR was PPE, while the road car and later ones they tested on were supposedly production.

 

kryzs, read EVO. Here is Roger Green's opening paragraph on the track test write up which illustrates what I said in my last post.

" 'Don't be afraid to damage the car. A little damage is okay. Just push, okay? Push, push, push!' If there was any doubt as to the importance of this test to Ferrari, then this pep talk from one of the support crew is enough to banish them. And don't imagine for one minute that McLaren is taking this shootout lightly either. Its chief engineer might not be employing quite such unabashed psyching techniques before every run but I can most definately sense the pressure. They've brought along an even greater number of engineers and support staff than the italians to the Bedford battleground."

 

And after all the fuss and hoopla over test weights EVO have merely used the respective manufacturers published weights as opposed to the actual weight of the cars tested.