McLaren 720s vs Ferrari F8 Daily Driver Comparison

720s vs F8 Spider: Daily Driver Comparison

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Hi All,
Two months ago, I swapped out my 2019 720s spider for a 2022 F8 spider after many months of vacillating over what car to get next. When I was trying to decide on my next ride, there were very few comparative 720s vs F8 reviews. Those that existed were primarily performance focused reviews, so I thought I’d add to the lore, by writing up a comparison from the perspective of a long-term daily driver. I am posting this on both Mac and Ferrari forums and hope it will be useful to someone - or at least attract anger in equal measure ;0)


The context: I live on the Isle of Man (a small island in the Irish Sea) and use these cars every day. So the driving is a mixture of short daily hops into work and to the shops etc, combined with taking these cars up on our mountain roads, which are long, wide, sweeping beautifully kept ‘A’ roads. And, magically, unlike anywhere else in the British Isles, there is no speed limit so I have always been able to open these cars right up pretty regularly.

I bought the McLaren 720s when it was 10 months old with 3k on the clock, in Sept 2020. It was a performance model that had been spec’ced with every carbon fiber option imaginable. Over my five years of ownership, I did about 19,000 miles - all thoroughly enjoyed. I bought the ‘22 F8 with 2.3k on the clock in late May 25 and have already notched up 1k with lots of smiles per mile (about 300 miles was actually UK motorway mileage).


F8 Spider Vs McLaren 720s - Comparing them as daily drivers

1. Performance and the driving experience: I’m not going to dwell on pure performance, as I don’t track and really don’t know much about high performance driving. The stats on these cars show they are pretty evenly matched, but there are a few important differences I have noted in every day driving:

(a) Ride comfort: Reviews had suggested that the F8 ride was firm, (compared to the 488 I guess). So suprisingly the F8 is a much smoother ride than the Big Mac (comparing bumpy road mode with comfort mode on the Mac). In the Mac, you feel every bump in the road; by contrast the Ferrari generally has that feel of driving a big ‘grown up’ car. Also, I could never really tell the difference in the Mac between the various suspension modes, while in F8, it is more obvious and it stiffens up nicely when it is in corsa or race mode. Also on the suspension/chassis, I was worried about the reviews talking about ‘scuttle shake’ in the F8. Yes you can definitely feel/hear the chassis twist, particularly going diagonally over speed bumps, but I honestly haven’t noticed it affecting the stability/driveability of the car at speed at all. That said, the Mac has the advantage of feeling *incredibly* stable - the rigid carbon tub combined with the clever electronic traction controls make it really really hard to make it put a foot wrong, while the F8 can be a bit squirrelly accelerating over poor surfaces and it is definitely easier to lose the rear end in the F8…​

(b) Acceleration / pick up: Technically, the relevant stats are the nearly the same for the two cars, however the way you experience the 2.9secs to 60mph is very different. To me, the F8 is way, way faster to pick up in the initial acceleration than the Mac. To get that same raw feeling in the Mac, you have to keep the revs over 4000rpm. The Ferrari is simply easier to go mad with as there’s no obvious turbo lag. I had read about this in the reviews, but I didn’t think it would be so obvious - it really is. As well as having less turbo lag, the Ferrari is also notably more fun in automatic mode vs the Mac in automatic mode (see gear box section below for more):​

(c) Modes: Both cars have roughly equivalent ‘modes’ (the Mac’s comfort = Ferrari’s wet mode; sport = corsa; track = race), but Ferrari just implements this so much better. In the Mac it takes two (or three) button presses and looking away from the road to change modes; in the Ferrari, it is one switch - the famous Mannetino - on the steering wheel itself, so switching modes is super simple. As a daily driver, this shouldn’t matter that much, but in practice it means I happily fiddle with different modes in the Ferrari even on short journeys, where I wouldn’t bother on the Mac. This definitely makes the Ferrari more fun.​

(d) Gearbox: To me, perhaps the biggest difference in driving experience, aside from the Mac’s turbo lag, is both cars’ performance in automatic mode. As a daily driver, I spend a lot time in automatic, switching into manual when I’m taking the ‘long way home’….Ferrari have implemented gear changes in automatic way better than McLaren. In the Mac in comfort mode, you have to mash the pedal to the floor to get it drop a gear to give you the magic of the turbos kicking in. If you do anything less then the Mac just refuses to change gear. Similarly at higher revs the Mac changes *up* a gear way too early, unless you are again mashing the pedal. Worse than that Mac’s designers seem to have implemented completely different gear change rules in ‘sport’ mode, where basically the gear box doesn’t change gear at all until you get to the redline, unless you are really gentle on the pedal. This means you are deafening pedestrians in the middle of town when you pull away from traffic quickly in sport mode ;0). By contrast the Ferrari seems to genuinely understand how you are trying to drive and adjusts the shifting accordingly. From messing around with it, it seems that the car detects how fast you push the accelerator pedal and adjusts the shifting in direct proportion - Whereas the Mac was much more binary (mash it to get it to drop a gear and go to the redline, with anything less leaving you reading the newspaper while you wait for the turbos to kick in). This makes a significant difference to daily driving, as you can have some 'controlled' fun with the Ferrari when you are tootling along in automatic and there’s a sudden opportunity to blast. In the same situation in the Mac in comfort mode, it either rips your arms off as you launch off the lights into the cars in front when you mash the pedal, or nothing much happens....​

2. Living inside the cabin: Both cars are pretty much the same size externally, but because the Mac’s carbon tub creates incredibly wide sills that you have to climb over, the interior space in the Mac is massively reduced. The Ferrari interior feels vast by comparison and generally gives the impression of being in a much larger car, even though you are not. The Ferrari’s interior generally oozes quality and it always feels like you are sitting in a real supercar…the Mac not so much…My f8 has a standard crema interior with electric Daytona seats, while the Mac had an MSO finish - alacantara with orange stitching and carbon fibre everywhere - but it still just didn't feel as quality as the Ferrari.​

3. Build Quality: McLaren’s rattles vs Ferrari’s foibles - actually there’s no contest at all here for me…the Ferrari, superficially at least, absolutely oozes build quality, particularly in the cabin. The Mclaren, on the other hand, feels a bit shonky. The McLaren’s materials are all great, and it really does feel hand built, but built by the hand of a work experience lad that had other things on his mind at the time….To me this was always such a shame about the Mclaren: Beautiful design and engineering, but badly assembled and it shows. Yes it’s true about the body panels, they do all look like they don’t quite fit together properly and lots of the fixings are, well just poor. The dreaded rusty panels were also an ssue on my car and I had three panels changed (under warranty) within three years.

4. Practicalities: Now onto the super practical stuff that is really only relevant if, like me, you really do use these cars for going to work, the gym, the shopping etc:

(a) Getting in and getting out: 720s dihedral (upward swinging) doors vs F8 regular doors: This is a counter-intuitive one and one I had no idea would have such a big impact. The 720s doors are far, *far* more practical than, the f8 doors, as even when you are in a small space, the doors open upward, so there’s always plenty of room to get in and out. By contrast the F8 doors are very wide (and obviously swing out). So, in tight spaces, you have to kind of hold the door to stop it hitting the car next to you and then shimmy through the tiny gap that is left. The f8s are definitely not easy cars to get into and out of down at Tescos or in town. This has actually been quite annoying coming from the Mclaren, which is surprisingly easy to put in tight spaces. Aside from the practicality, the Mac’s doors also just look bloody cool ;0)

(b) The sounds: 720s 12 speaker B&W system vs. F8 Burmester ‘Hifi Premium’: There’s no contest here - Ferrari beats the Mac hands down and it shouldn’t. The reason it does is probably nothing to do with the hifi in the Mclaren, it is because when the volume is up in the Mclaren, there is always something that rattles somewhere in the cabin that is really really irritating. I have taken off panels and Mclaren has fiddled with the speakers to try and reduce it…but no joy.

(c) Reversing Cameras: Neither of them are that good frankly, although the Ferrari’s is perfectly usable and has the benefit of swinging lines (that show where the car will go based on wheel position). There is one major downside in the Big Mac - through some genius Mclaren design - when you are on full wheel lock in reverse, you cannot see the screen for the reversing camera, as the spoke of the steering wheel sits directly in front of the screen..arrggh...this is incredibly irritating and makes the reversing camera redundant in many situations….

(d) The convertible hard top: Both cars have similar hoods - electronic hard tops that both go up and down in 10-15 seconds or so, so very similar. Ferrari’s is slightly slow, but not noticeably. The Big Mac does win here though as from 2019 models onward, you can operate the roof from the ignition key when you are out of the car. Ferrari lacks this - again a small thing, but surprisingly irritating when you’ve been used to the Mclaren (it is annoying when you forget to shut the roof and then have to get back in and switch the ignition on to just to put the roof up, or when you want to avoid getting into a sauna in hot weather).

(e) Luggage space: There’s very little to choose between them. They both have good frunks. The Ferrari is a slightly more awkward shape but not significantly smaller and both will easily fit a large Tesco’s shopping session in. The Ferrari does have much more room in the cabin behind the seats for throwing in things like coats and rugs and small bags/briefcase. Theoretically the Big Mac has additional storage when the hood is up, in the tonneau cover, but this really isn’t a particularly practical space to use (I used it once in five years).

(f) Trickle Charging: Both cars need to be put on a trickle charger if they are left for any time. With the Mac, I could happily leave it a week without a charge and it would be fine (much longer and then weird and wonderful errors would start appearing on firing her up). The Ferrari on the other hand is a PITA - At the moment I put the charger on every night as there seems to be a much higher drain on the battery when it is left standing: More than just two nights of not charging and error messages start appearing. So, I have taken to carrying a NOCO jump starter block with me at all times just in case. This seems to be widely known about on the forums, so it is either the stock Ferrari battery being pretty rubbish, or some poorly implemented electronics that just suck juice constantly. ​

5. After sales / Maintenance: At this point I don’t have enough experience with Ferrari to provide a comparison with Maclaren. However, Mclaren has set a ridiculously low benchmark. All my interactions with Maclaren in my near five years of ownership were laced with bad experiences. I won’t bore you with the details, but on two occasions I went to the trouble of writing to Maclaren customer service about their dealerships - as I really want Maclaren to succeed as a business - I never even received a reply or acknowledgement. Poor service from Maclaren was one of the reasons I chose not to upgrade to a 750s, despite really liking the test drive I had. This again is a shame, as the cars are of course amazing. Fingers crossed Ferrari prove easier to deal with. I’ll update in a year’s time :0)​

Conclusions: The bottom line is that both cars are amazing - they are absolute speed demons and owning either one will be a joy; they will both scare the bejesus out of you and they will both make you fall in love with driving.

On the very practical aspects of these cars, the Mac slightly has it, mainly down to those dihedral doors making day to day parking much *much* easier - something I really hadn’t thought about before. That combined with the F8’s irritant of having to plug it in every night, gives the 720s the edge (ignoring Maclaren’s total lack of customer service).

However, on an all round basis as a daily car, the slightly less practical aspects of the F8 are overweighed by the driving experience. The F8 is just more fun, even on short journeys, vs the incredibly stable Mac that you have to push to the limits of your license to get that same buzz. The F8 is just easier to have a blast in (the downside is it is definitely easier to lose the rear end in the F8, even with all the nanny controls switched on).


So there you have it - I’d be really happy to try and answer any questions on any other aspects of the cars that I can. I’m a lover of both of these awesome V8s. Sadly, these models will be amongst the last of their kind and you really can’t go wrong with either of them - So go beg, buy or borrow either one and enjoy them before the only things left to buy are the glorified milk floats masquerading as EVs :0)

 

Hi @dustman,
Good question - I’ll edit the post to add a section on exhaust note! From all of the reviews prior to picking up the F8, I was worried I’d be disappointed (I live a day’s journey from any dealers, so I bought the F8 without having driven it or seen it in the flesh - I had just driven 458s and 488s before). The reviews were, however, clearly comparing the F8 with the 488 and Pista & yes with the gas particulate filter makes it much quieter (I’m not sure whether they had to fit these filters in the US as well, or was it just Europe?).

That said, though, compared to the Mac, the F8 exhaust note is beautiful - a low bassy boom in the low rev range (I just love the cold starts) working up to scream as you hit the redline. It won’t announce your presence a couple of miles away (like huracan’s and aventadors), which I prefer, but there’s no doubting it is a screaming V8 :0) The Mac’s exhaust note is boring by comparison, as it just lacks Ferrari’s big bass note.

In relation to cabin noise, rather than exhaust note, I have done quite a bit of motorway driving in both cars and the F8 is definitely a more peaceful cabin to be in. The Mclaren cabin seems to have less sound proofing from the road noise which becomes quite intrusive at full chat (so I always had the Hifi on full blast, even with the rattling panels :0). Ferrari has put a bit of thought into soundproofing the cabin and it is very calm at motorway speeds, so much so that unlike the Mclaren where it is very apparent when you are doing license losing speeds; it creeps up on you in the Ferrari and you suddenly realise you need to slow down or risk making the local headlines ;0)

Best
G.

 

I did have problems with the 720’s accumulators in fact - first the suspension lift stopped working, then after that was fixed, the accumulators themselves went about ten months later (they started making that constant pumping sound trying to keep the pressure up). So they were replaced.

That said, the ride in Maclaren was smooth, compared with, for example, my old VX2200 - in which you would feel every pebble on the road. But the Mac just was not quite as smooth as the ride in the F8 - I was expecting the opposite, so I was quite surprised by this. It is possible that the 720’s accumulators had got stiffer over time (they had done about 10k since they were replaced) and I just hadn’t noticed them stiffening up.

 

Yep it is a real shame. In my near five years of ownership of the Mac (from 3k miles to 22k miles), I’ve had the following problems that needed Mclaren to sort out:
1. Windows jamming;
2. Dynamic headlights failing on one side (that was scary!);
3. Panel Corrosion (panels all replaced under warranty);
4. Total key fob failure (car became a brick for three weeks and had to be towed). After sorting, one key fob failed again, so I had all new fobs installed;
5. Suspension lift failure, followed by accumulator failure;
6. Windscreen wiper motors jamming.

That list sounds bad, now that I’ve written it down! It didn’t feel that bad at the time :0) The worst bit was always dealing with Maclaren.

Several exceptionally poor experiences stand out: The first was getting the warranty work done by Mclaren in New Forest. They were appalling - they dismantled the car before the parts were available, so it sat with them for the best part of ten weeks waiting for parts - no apology; no offer of courtesy car; and a constant refrain of its being done tomorrow, tomorrow….terrible customer service and they didn’t even acknowledge my formal letter of complaint to the directors.

The second terrible experience was getting the key fob replaced - this story is almost comical:- As I live a day’s journey away from the dealer, I had organised to bring the car in to have the key fobs replaced and new ones programmed. Mclaren Manchester promised that the spare fobs would be available - I asked them to order them in, in advance, as I needed the car to be turned around straight away - they refused and promised the fobs were available and would be delivered the same day they booked the car in. So I take the car in, with the intention of picking it up the following night, but guess what…the new key fobs hadn’t turned up. As I had business in the UK anyway, I hung around for another couple of days while they tracked the parts. Two days and still nothing…at this point Mac Manchester had been in touch with their regional directors to escalate it, and it turned out - I kid you not - that the distribution company was refusing to deliver the key fobs because they contained a lithium battery (yes the CR2032 tiny camera batteries)….McLaren’s supply chain had just signed a new distribution contract and clearly screwed up the contract….it took another ten days to arrive…quite unbelievable, despite the service manager in Mclaren Manchester asking Mclaren in Woking if he could just drive down and pick the new fobs up from the factory…... Once again letters of complaint to McLaren HQ weren’t even achknowledged. To be fair to Maclaren in Manchester - the dealer - they were absolutely mortified by the whole affair, as I had to fly back home, instead of taking the car, and fly back again to pick it up when the fobs arrived. Looking back on it, it was laughable…but not at the time :0)

 

Hi @BuyHighSellLow !
Don’t let my write up scare you off the 720s. It is an amazing car - look at me, I kept hold of it for four and a half years as my only car - I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it, even after its warranty had long since expired - I just couldn’t find another car that ticked all the boxes for me. Most of the issues that I listed with my car were minor irritations that were easily sorted (except the key fobs…which was just plain unlucky and almost unheard of)

I completely agree with @Ivan Drago and @Gh21631 get the 720s, make sure you have a good local dealer to sort out niggly things like windows not fully closing etc. and I guarantee you will have tonnes of fun in it!

Also, as @Gh21631 says, don’t read too much into the differences in turbo lag - in the Maclaren, you just get used to managing the RPM and, honestly, if you drive it in manual the whole time, you will not notice it (you’ll just scare pedestrians, every time you drop a gear in the high street to pull away from traffic ;0) There is also a certain ‘frissant’ that comes with the heart stopping moment when the turbos kick in at 4k rpm on the Mclaren! The lag is less obvious on the F8, but the difference is only meaningful to the driving experience if you are cruising around in automatic.

 

That is really good to hear! I test drove a 750s and 296GTS side by side, as I thought I was going to upgrade to one of those two. I really liked the 750S as it was suprisingly different to 720s driving experience. I very nearly bought the 750s, but for three reasons I went to the F8: the primary reason was I didn’t like where the 750s was in its depreciation curve, as I can’t bring myself to buy new cars, or cars that are still around their retail price and the Macs have historically not done that well in the first two years vs Ferrari..and having lost a tonne of money on my wife’s previous two electric cars (an iPace and a Taycan), I was determined to minimise depreciation with this purchase. The second reason was simply that I always wanted to own a Ferrari !! The final reason was McLaren’s service levels. But that final reason, on its own, would not have dissuaded me from buying a 750s - I’m a believer that if your expectations are already low, you can only be pleasantly suprised :0)

I decided against the 296s also because of the depreciation on it (and my bad experiences with EVs and hybrids), which led me to the F8. I strongly suspect that in a couple of year’s time, I will swap back to Mclaren and the 750s, particularly if their build quality and service levels have improved and if Ferrari, or anyone else doesn’t produce another big mid-engine non-hybrid in the meantime.