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This is the McLaren 570-S Spider.
Spider denoting two seater convertible in this case.
And loads of companies use the term Spider to denote that.
Porsche, Audi, Lamborghini, to name but a few.
But have you ever wondered where that term Spider comes from?
Well, like a lot of things in automotive circles it comes from an era well before the car.
In the early days of automotive design companies would build a rolling chassis and you would take that to a coach builder who would actually build the bodywork around it and create the car that you wanted.
And they obviously came from the world of coaches, horse drawn coaches.
And the term spider dates back to that era.
[NOISE] There were types of coaches called phaetons.
Phaeton name after Phaeton, the son of Helios, who famously almost sent the earth on fire by riding the chariots of the sun.
Sounds like a fun dude.
Anyway, the phaetons had different types of coaches like the mail coach.
The mail phaeton which was a more robust.
Almost freight carrier, industrial-scale coach.
Or the Phaeton spider, a much more lightweight, almost spindly, you could say, design, much like a spider.
It was high, it was light with large spoked wheels.
Spider was a term that went well with that.
And it just stuck.
And somehow in the automotive world when they started making sporty little cars the term spider got carried over.
Now, whether you should spell spider with an i or with a y, there's no real hard and fast rule.
Ferrari Uses I now, but used to use a Y. Porsche uses a Y, McLaurin use an I. But whether you spell it with an I or a Y, it always relates to a two-seater convertible.
And now you know.
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