I would venture to suggest that MacLaren have their own serious issues in terms of the Portimao cars not reflecting the set up of the recent press test cars and being somewhat "better" in terms of handling. The difference between those glowing initial reviews and the sudden nigh on universal press cooling towards the car have gone totally unexplained thus far. Chris Harris alludes to it in a veiled manner in his current EVO column with a reference to being fooled by Aston at the launch of the DB9.
Go back and read any reviews of the launch of the 458, 997 GT2 RS, Mercedes SLS, Lamborghini Super Leggera etc and you will not read such a marked change in opinion from the original review to the road test impressions that you will find with the 12C. Ferrari really would have had to work an almighty miracle to the 458 to turn those initial press impressions of the 12C around to the extent they have been and that simply isn't tenable as the journalists involved have had extensive exposure to the 458 over the last 20 months and would have noticed significant handling trait differences. After all we are not talking of the 458 demolishing the 12C here but beating it by anything from a few tenths up to a second or so when Woking claimed their car was going to be
way out in front on any track, a claim supported by the press hyperbole after the Portimao launch drives. Ignore the lap times for one second and the 458 repeatedly comes out on top for driver enjoyment, something that also shouldn't have been the case after those initial glowing post Portimao reviews. Delve into the the track tests and it is clear that the 458 was not faster overall but the more controllable handling allowed it to beat the 12C through the corners where it had better balance thus giving it the advantage. That is down to the two differing technical solutions in each car and McLaren's dogged intention to use brake steer to link their car to their F1 tech (even though it was banned in that sport).
It is this lack of consistency in performance and the fact that McLaren are using the "excuse" that their press launch cars are still pre-production models that would concern me were I a depositor so close to the release of customer cars. By this stage of the development the final shake down testing should have been thoroughly completed and the cars coming off the line all be set up with the exact final tolerances. That does not appear to be the case. Georg Kacher pointedly refers to the lack of consistency in the handling of the McLaren test cars in his blog
http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Community/Car-Magazines-Blogs/Georg-Kacher-Blog/Georg-Kacher-supercar-summit-counterpoint/
In spite of 6th Element's outbursts at me I'm not bashing the 12C but am somewhat surprised (and disappointed) at the resounding shortfall in it's claimed performance (on a track, not in a straight line) and the fact that no "final production" cars have been used for press tests.
You can knock Ferrari as much as you like for all I care but having visited the production line at Maranello several times I cannot see that Woking are in any way disadvantaged by building the early cars in the MTC. People I know and trust who've been to both sites say that if anything, Woking has the edge for apparent quality control superiority. That comes as no surprise with Ron Dennis in charge. It also negates any claim on Woking's part for supplying incorrectly torqued suspensions for the Car test IMHO as their attention to detail is legendary. No doubt there will be those here who will disagree but to suffer such a QC issue on such a critical test AND when the car suffering the failure was specifically supplied for the track test section only should more than raise eyebrows. If they cannot get that car right then what about all the customer and demo cars that are already built and sitting at Woking?
Again there will be those who knock Ferrari for the fire issue but as I've already explained that issue affected only 5 cars out of something like 1300 that had been produced by that stage. There have been NO other consistent problems with the car or any systemic failures. Of course there are isolated issues just as there are on any new model, let alone one with such low production volumes. Overall though Ferrari has moved on so far with quality and reliability that if you speak to the service managers at it's dealers they are becoming increasingly worried that with every new model launched since the 599GTB they have seen a marked decline in both maintenance required on these cars, a huge increase in reliability and a marked drop in warranty related work. They are therefore short of service revenue now which is great news from an owners perspective.
Have a read of these well written pieces by Phil Bennet - Le Mans driver, test driver for Caparo and the driver who set the lap record at the Nurburgring in the Radical SR3 to gain an insight into some of the issues affecting the development of the 12C -
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=192803690748790
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=220265381335954
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=205857409443418
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=198180070211152