All That GLITTERS

BIG MONEY, BIGGER POWER, AND HYPERSPEED FUN IN THE SUN

- JONNY LIEBERMAN

The shapes of these machines, especially in these colors, make children jump and squeal with joy—while most adults wish they weren’t quite so self-conscious so that they could do the same.

Because you’re wondering, oh yes, some grownups act like kids around these things (yours truly first and foremost). This trio truly is a collection of rare, exotic beasts. Each one represents a topless version of its respective company’s near-pinnacle performance car.

I say “near” because McLaren just unveiled the 765LT, Mercedes-AMG makes the GT R Pro, and Porsche, well, you just know there will soon be a GT2 RS that makes this car seem like a snail. Plus, all three manufacturers are in the hypercar business, to varying degrees (P1, Senna, Project One, 918 Spyder).

The question, then, is, “Why?” Why would an automaker take a perfectly good supercar and hamstring it by removing rigidity and adding weight? That’s the question you’d ask before you’d spent a few days driving this shimmering trio around some of Southern California’s greatest roads. After doing so, the only question is, “Why the hell not?”

I’m going to asterisk this comparison test at this point. First of all, we still can’t test cars, so I don’t have any objective numbers to point you to. Sorry. Also, yes, we should have had the McLaren 600LT Spider instead of the 720S Spider, as the former’s base price of $259,000 is much more in line with the other two than the latter’s starting price of (yikes) $317,500. Don’t even think about the as-tested price of (gulp) $372,750. However, there wasn’t a 600LT Spider available. So we took one for the team and grabbed the only convertible Macca had on offer, the 720S Spider. The sacrifices we all make, right?