I am new to the forum, so please let me know if my comments are out of line.
We all known for years that a certain company in Italy has historically provided "juiced" cars to automotive magazines to amp up their performance numbers. It's part of their mystique and if they didn't do it, we'd all be nervous about what they were really up to. ['ya just got to love those EYE-talians]. But I think in the case of the magazine tests of the 458, it has come back to bite their collective bottom and provide an unexpected to benefit to all the McLaren owners (current, future, MP4-12C and others). Here's my take:
1. The F-boys provided their typically juiced 458 for magazine testing and it came much closer to the MP4-12C's performance than Woking expected. Normally, that is where it all would end. The 458 would have equal or better numbers than the competitive car and F-car sales would proceed accordingly. But here's where it all went awry.
2. McLaren, instead of just taking its lumps, BEING AN ENGINEERING COMPANY, dialed more horsepower and a more aggressive shift sequence into the MP4-12C and opened up the gap from the 458. Then, they gave the upgrades to everyone FOR FREE. Now, F-world was really stuck. The MP4-12C performed better than even their juiced car. That never happened to them before.
Good Grief!! But wait, there's more.
3. No doubt, Woking had planned a certain performance gap between the MP4-12C and the forthcoming McLaren even-more-super car -- -- good sense and sound marketing. But now, since the MP4-12C's performance has been moved up the food chain, the next, higher performance model, will also have to be amped up proportionally. So now, the gap between that next McLaren and whatever the Maranello gang plan to build is going to be that much greater. So the Modena boys' bad conduct got them slapped twice.
4. But there's one more wack at the pride of Italy. Their product progression is always the same: (1) base model, (2) a year later the spyder and (3) in 18 more months the Stradle/Scuderia type final model. But the improved MP4-12C will have more performance than the next Stradale/Scuderia iteration, so more problems for the red cars. Their street champion isn't one.
To make matters worse, the fact that McLaren made the MP4-12C upgrades available to all at no cost was a PR coup and pure McLaren class.
So, like mommy taught us (and apparently our friends in Modena weren't listening to their Mommy), when you do naughty things, naughty things happen to you -- -- most of which you never anticipated.
I apologize for this being so long and if I've unfairly ruffled some feathers, I'll apologize for that too. But sometimes it's good to stir things up and for right now, that's how I see it. Congrats to everyone whose supercar has an M-swoosh emblem on it.
We all known for years that a certain company in Italy has historically provided "juiced" cars to automotive magazines to amp up their performance numbers. It's part of their mystique and if they didn't do it, we'd all be nervous about what they were really up to. ['ya just got to love those EYE-talians]. But I think in the case of the magazine tests of the 458, it has come back to bite their collective bottom and provide an unexpected to benefit to all the McLaren owners (current, future, MP4-12C and others). Here's my take:
1. The F-boys provided their typically juiced 458 for magazine testing and it came much closer to the MP4-12C's performance than Woking expected. Normally, that is where it all would end. The 458 would have equal or better numbers than the competitive car and F-car sales would proceed accordingly. But here's where it all went awry.
2. McLaren, instead of just taking its lumps, BEING AN ENGINEERING COMPANY, dialed more horsepower and a more aggressive shift sequence into the MP4-12C and opened up the gap from the 458. Then, they gave the upgrades to everyone FOR FREE. Now, F-world was really stuck. The MP4-12C performed better than even their juiced car. That never happened to them before.
Good Grief!! But wait, there's more.3. No doubt, Woking had planned a certain performance gap between the MP4-12C and the forthcoming McLaren even-more-super car -- -- good sense and sound marketing. But now, since the MP4-12C's performance has been moved up the food chain, the next, higher performance model, will also have to be amped up proportionally. So now, the gap between that next McLaren and whatever the Maranello gang plan to build is going to be that much greater. So the Modena boys' bad conduct got them slapped twice.
4. But there's one more wack at the pride of Italy. Their product progression is always the same: (1) base model, (2) a year later the spyder and (3) in 18 more months the Stradle/Scuderia type final model. But the improved MP4-12C will have more performance than the next Stradale/Scuderia iteration, so more problems for the red cars. Their street champion isn't one.
To make matters worse, the fact that McLaren made the MP4-12C upgrades available to all at no cost was a PR coup and pure McLaren class.
So, like mommy taught us (and apparently our friends in Modena weren't listening to their Mommy), when you do naughty things, naughty things happen to you -- -- most of which you never anticipated.
I apologize for this being so long and if I've unfairly ruffled some feathers, I'll apologize for that too. But sometimes it's good to stir things up and for right now, that's how I see it. Congrats to everyone whose supercar has an M-swoosh emblem on it.
