XCAR Review of 2013: May

-Hi. And welcome to the XCAR round-up of the year where today, we're talking about May. Another jam-packed month. And we looked up McLaren MP4-12C, or 12C as it's known to its mates. And the Classic Car Club lent us a Rolls-Royce. -Uh-huh. -Well, we start off with the McLaren 12C. Good Lord, that thing is competent. You had a very quick spin there. I had it for, I think, four, five days. It was unbelievable. It was comfortable. That's the-- that's the way you think. You get in a supercar, and it's mental fast, it's very much as you'd expect a supercar to be. We get in the McLaren, and it just glides over bumps. The cliché goes that it's like being in an S-Class. But you're in a supercar. But it is actually quite like that. It looks good. It's punishingly fast. But if you're very, very, very-- I say patient, you can get nearly 30 miles per gallon. I saw that I got 28.8 mpg of it on the M4, driving back from Wales. -Yeah. No one buys the McLaren for the mpg, though. -No. They don't. But you can do it if you want to. It was-- it looked great, it went unbelievably quickly. -We had an exceptionally likely position to have had the 458 Italia-- -Uh-huh. -which is the direct competitor for the-- -Yeah. -MP4-12C. So, we drove that a year earlier. -Yeah. -Which would you pick? -That's tough. You know what? I'd pretty go with the McLaren. I'm one of the very few people that would do that. But I'd go with the McLaren. I think the way the Ferrari has [unk] its power and its noise, and its look and its feel, is incredible. But if I had the money and I was in that situation, I'd buy the McLaren and then spend all of my free time on Airfield, just going up and down in third gear. -I don't think you can look at those performance figures and say a car's-- that car is truly boring. I mean, I was looking at-- -No. -this thing, it's not like-- I don't think that car could ever be boring. -No. I mean, it's a relative thing, all right? -Yeah. -When people say it's boring, they mean the absolute top end of exciting-- -Yeah. -this might not be quite on the-- -Quite as exciting. - most exciting side of that tip. -I think that's a first world problem. -Yeah. -That is very much a first world-- -As-- -problem. -As I said in film, the 12C, or McLaren itself, has a bit of an issue because people say, "Oh, it's not as exciting as Ferrari because McLaren itself as a brand is very race-focused, very multiple focused," which isn't as accessible to people who just like cars. Because you get people who like cars, and you get people who are in motor sports, as well. So, Ferrari has an enormous road car heritage, whereas McLaren has the F1. -Yeah. -And that's it. Well, and sort-- a little bit of Mercedes McLaren SLR. So, people don't get that actually, all the passion that you get in a Ferrari actually still goes in to a McLaren. -Okay. Well, from modern cars back then to classics. We went down to Classic Car Club and picked up a Rolls-Royce-- a 1973 Rolls-Royce Corniche. -My word. That was one hell of a car. It was-- it was such a privilege to drive such an old car. And they make quite a few of them, so they're not completely uncommon. You can find them around. In fact, you could probably pick one up quite reasonably now because they're just so well-built. This car is 40 years old, and it drove so, so well. But it was the feeling of driving it through Central London with the top down on a cool evening and just-- this is something like driving a Rolls-Royce in London. It just seems like everything fits like a jigsaw puzzle, everything has fallen into place. And you're driving this huge car, which is so, so easy to drive. We've driven it previously the year before, for only about 20 or 30 minutes. And this time, we had it for the whole day. We did a nice shoot with it. And it's-- you literally can steer this 2-1/2 ton car with one finger on the wheel. You don't think it should be possible, but you can. Almost everything worked on it as well, which was quite impressive. It's fabulous. -London at night all lit up, and this Rolls-Royce Corniche kind of going through Regent Street, we went past Knightsbridge, and it just looked beautiful and stunning. And it just looked in its element. And I think that was the perfect place to shoot it, really. -The links to that film and everything else we've discussed today will be below, and hopefully, you'll join us again tomorrow where we'll be recapping on June.