ASSUALT & BATTERY

IT ALWAYS USED TO BE FERRARI VERSUS LAMBORGHINI. NOWADAYS THE RIVALRY IS ONE THAT SPILLS FROM F1 TO THE STREETS: FERRARI VERSUS MCLAREN. WE PUT TWO OF THEIR FINEST HEAD-TO-HEAD

- ANDREW FRANKEL

TODAY FERRARI still provides the benchmark. It's a strange thing but whenever one of these tests takes place, we always think of the other car as the one 'being put up against the Ferrari'.

It is Ferrari's opponent that always starts in the role of pretender, the one with it all to prove, and whatever the outcome of the next few thousand words, I don't think they'll do much to change that. What is different is that the young upstart trying to depose the king now has a different name: McLaren. If you really want to find out if a Ferrari still has what it takes and is more than just a legendary badge sat atop a delectable skin, it is to Woking, not Sant'Agata, that you must now turn.

And I really do need to know how good the 296 GTB is, because quite recently I was brave/stupid/reckless - delete as appropriate - enough to describe it as 'the greatest Ferrari of the modern era'. But I've been waiting for McLaren to come up with a car that might depose it. Ignore those lazy hacks who have concluded the Artura is its closest rival because they share conceptually similar 120-degree 3.0-litre V6 twinturbo plug-in hybrid powertrains - the Ferrari is in a different league in power, performance and, most of all, price - and look instead toward the new 750S.

Yes, the McLaren produces its power a very different way - through a conventional 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 - but ignore for now how they got there and consider instead the result: two cars whose 0-100km/h times are separated by 0.1sec, and which are separated by no more even at 200km/h; cars with near-identical top speeds, priced within $17,500 of each other.

You'll pay more for a single option on either.