FYI: MP4-12C at Miller Motorcars

There's a gorgeous silver McLaren MP4-12C sitting on Miller's parking lot on Route 1. Easily worth a detour. (Another contemporary design that looks far, far better in person than it ever will in pictures.)

 

Drove by Miller about two hours ago in the hopes of seeing the silver MP4-12C again. Instead, we were treated to a white example with black interior, seriously dark graphite wheels, black mirrors and black intake partitions.

Great car but the 458 up the block looked far, far better to my eyes -- as does the idea of an NA engine.

 

Are you claiming that the MP4's turbos are transparent?

And the fact that turbos will be required soon -- news flash! -- is irrelevant to people who, like me, despise forced air induction in performance cars. (You did look at my nick, right?)

 

Don't you find that the thrills in such cars are kind of one-dimensionsal when compared to the overall experience of a great NA engine that's coupled to a great chassis?

 

They're always claimed to be "quite unnoticeable", more so now that Emissions have robbed NA engines of a good deal of both their throttle response and R&D budgets.

While this is hardly the forum for delving into what is and isn't a viable threat to the planet, the fact that we're heading this way doesn't address either my preference for NA engines, Green controversies -- evo claimed recently that composite truck frames would reduce pollution far more than this Brussles-DC crusade against performance automobiles ever could -- or the fact that the cream of the automotive crop have always had NA engines. (I'd find the fact that forced air engines allow for lighter cars with better packaging far more persuasive.)

And as I've said elsewhere I don't own a Ferrari or anything like one.