Really, wow.
My point was the complete opposite. I feel as a Ferrari owner and also as someone with a 12C spider on order that visiting this site is usually a case of reading as many Ferrari bashing posts as it is reading informative 12C posts. Oh well, I need to worry less, ignore the Ferrari bashes and concentrate on the 12C based threads.
Russell, I value your perspective but I think there are subtleties that are being missed by the casual observer, which is perhaps inevitable due to the nature of a web forum.
Certainly, I feel that there are generalizations about McLaren owners that all we care about is lap times, each fraction of second, etc., etc., perhaps in the same vein as Porsche owners are sometimes viewed. For me, however, this issue is not about that. As I told Tony Joseph directly, I don't care if the 12C is the fastest or not because there will ALWAYS be something faster. If not today, then just wait a couple of months. What I DO care about is McLaren fostering a corporate culture of integrity and honesty with its customers. Of course I am aware that all manufacturers will meddle to some extent, but I pleaded with Joseph to make sure that McLaren press cars are representative of customer cars - not because I hope to turn 1:16.2 at Dunsfold myself, but because I feel the ideology is important. For example, when Luca says unequivocally that he will NOT build a 458 Scuderia version - if he ends up doing so, I find that very disingenuous. Of course, serial Ferrari buyers will say that is just salesmanship, but what about the fella that has only saved up enough to do this once? I have a list of other such examples that have soured me to Ferrari's current corporate culture, but believe me, as a long-time Ferrari fan (since age 10 to be exact) nobody wants, more than me, to see them, and manufacturers in general, put their best foot forward and take the high road more often. I won't accept being labelled as naive, either, as I am a lifelong entrepreneur and I have tried to uphold a standard of ethics in my own affairs that hasn't prevented me from achieving some success. (and truth be told, I still cling to a goal of owning as many 12 cylinder, gated shifter Ferraris as I can afford in my lifetime)
So, much of what you see here can be trivialized as senseless Ferrari-bashing by self-serving McLaren owners, but I maintain that the undertones and reasons behind it are not so childish. Yes, I will often poke fun, but you must realize that much of that is directed at some very opportunistic members of other forums that came over here to gloat when McLaren had their initial teething troubles. Now that McLaren is out the other side and the car fairly seems to be kicking ass all over the place, it's hard to resist the odd jab since I know they are still reading, if no longer gloating. Yes, that bit is slightly juvenile, but hey we have to entertain ourselves somehow.
I know they are doing the same anyway and in the grand scheme of things, as andy says, it is all harmless fun.
Cheers.
