My Verdict:
During our week with the 720S, we put it through its paces from the winding country roads of rural New Jersey to the boulevards of Manhattan. We also subjected the McLaren to what is possibly the most treacherous test in the world for a supercar, the chaos of Friday afternoon rush hour traffic in New York.
The McLaren survived everything we could throw at it with flying colors. It delivered on all fronts; blistering acceleration off the line, buttery smooth cruising on the highway, and pure exhilaration around the corners. The steering is the most precise I've ever encountered and its slick shifting 7-speed dual-clutch gearbox is, as my colleague Matt DeBord put it, telepathic.
The new 710 horsepower, twin-turbo V12 is an engineering masterpiece and word on the street says McLaren can reliably squeeze more than 800 ponies out of the 4.0-liter engine.
Through it all, the cabin remained civilized and comfortable while the in-car tech worked without a hitch.
Its road-going spaceship looks and melodious exhaust also drew crowds of admirers everywhere we took the car.
So, was our love affair with the McLaren 720S a fleeting holiday romance? No.
A few hundred miles on the roads of New Jersey made me love the 720S even more. Which allows me to reiterate the point I made in May:
"Simply put, the McLaren 720S is the most "complete" supercar ever produced. Period."
And in terms of capability, I'll take it one step further. Having spent extensive time with its rivals from Honda, Audi, Lamborghini, and Ferrari, the McLaren is, in my opinion, the best supercar in the world right now.
In fact, at $300,000, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything better than the 720S for less than $1 million.
According to McLaren, the 720S can hit 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds and will reach a top speed of 212 mph. However, McLaren is known to underreport its performance data, so expect the 720S to be even quicker in reality.
At the heart of the 720S is a new 710-horsepower, 4.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 engine. It features brand new turbochargers, intercoolers, cylinder heads, crankshaft, and pistons. The new engine is not only significantly more powerful than the previous unit, it also produces fewer harmful emissions. Unfortunately, you can't open the hatch to see the motor, but McLaren did decide to bathe the engine compartment in mood lighting.
The 720 is also equipped with assistance features like 360-degree cameras and variable drift control, a system that allows drivers to perfect the art of drifting by giving them manual controls to adjust the traction control based on skill level and track conditions.
The 720S also gets a new 8-inch touchscreen running McLaren's new infotainment system with crisper graphics and updated menu layouts. The new architecture developed with JVCKENWOOD represents a significant improvement over the company's previous generation IRIS system that was clunky and confusing to use.
Speaking of buttons, McLaren made it a point to work on the tactile feel of its interior. What looks like carbon fiber is carbon fiber, metallic switches are machined out of aluminum, and leather accents come from only the finest cows.
In front of the driver is McLaren's new digital instrument cluster. Its display format changes based on the driving mode. In track mode, the display retracts into the dash revealing a small readout on top of the cluster.
Here's the luxury spec interior I sampled while in Italy.
While the seats change based on the specification of the car, the McLaren's ride quality doesn't. Much of this can be attributed to its new Proactive Chassis Control II system. In short, McLaren eschews anti-roll bars and traditional dampers for a system of interconnected hydraulic dampers.
The "proactive" bit comes from the advanced algorithms developed in conjunction with Cambridge University that adjusts chassis settings every two milliseconds based on input from a dozen sensors around the car. This gives drivers the impression the car can almost predict the future.
In addition, PCC II helps McLaren deliver the smoothest riding supercar in the world. Bumps that could shake a filling loose in a normal supercar come off as a minor disruption in the McLaren.
In fact, if Rolls-Royce ever lost its mind and decided to sink a few hundred million dollars into a hardcore supercar, it would be hard-pressed to make it ride better than the 720S.