Supercars should look like sex. This is what the voice inside my head has been insisting since I was 14 years old, when the very same (if slightly less mature) spirit guide led me to hang a Lamborghini Countach poster above my bed and doodle Ferrari Testarossas all over my Pee Chee folders.
But somehow, to my eye, the McLaren MP4-12C doesn't quite strike a nerve the way old school überexotics once did. Eye-popping curves and salacious silhouettes are time-honored ingredients of the exotic car formula. Like Vegas strip clubs or the pool bar at the Delano in South Beach, the meek need not apply -- and if they do, they better damn well have a good reason for loitering in that rarified company.
And so the McLaren MP4-12C, while comely and sleek, isn't the most visually charismatic player in this pumped up, pornographically endowed slice of the automotive stratosphere. Waist-high and swoopy, the McLaren may not be a shrinking violet in the topiary of supercars, but neither is it as sensuously enticing as the Monica Belucci-in-a-negligee Ferrari 458 Italia, or as intimidating as the oh-shit-the-mothership-has-landed Lamborghini Aventador. Even its alphanumeric moniker has more in common with C-3PO than any vehicle ought to.
Car geeks unite: Your steed is here, and only you will get the four-wheeled joke.
Continue reading Basem's review of the McLaren MP4-12C on Wired Product Reviews.
