Battle of the spiders: 488 vs Huracan vs 650S

You don’t see many fluoro supercars in Streatham, the dodgy end. I know this, because moments after opening the 650S’s butterfly door, swinging my leg over the chunky carbon sill and stumbling into the middle of the road, I’m descended upon by at least six of my neighbours, all with bouncing, chocolate-smeared children in tow.

It’s a full-time job being a supercar owner. First-world problems, I know, but it really is exhausting threading it through traffic without clouting the wing mirrors, smiling and waving at every enthused pedestrian and finding a parking space where you can see it from your bedroom window. A fitful night’s sleep follows, ravaged by anxiety dreams and no fewer than five curtain twitches to ensure it’s still there and without a fresh set of racing stripes down the side.

Photography: Richard Pardon

This feature was originally published in issue 285 of Top Gear magazine.

My 6am departure the next morning is sheer joy – just a snoozy city and the length of the M4 between me and the Black Mountain road in the Brecon Beacons. I’m off to meet two more decapitated supercars – the Lamborghini Huracán LP 610-4 Spyder and Ferrari 488 Spider – for two 98 RON-fuelled days throwing them at the best roads, and beaches, South Wales and the West Country have to offer. But first, an explanation, because while the 488 and Huracán are both hot off the production line, the 650S has been around for donkey’s years. Well, since 2014.

Avid readers will know there is now such a thing as the McLaren 675LT Spider – a £285,000 al fresco version of the 675LT Coupe that recently broke the TopGear lap record in the hands of The Stig. It has more power than the 650S Spider, a wider track, weighs 100kg less and produces more downforce. In short, it is a better car, but is limited to 500 units worldwide and sold out within weeks of its reveal. Our trio are the ones you can actually go out and buy now, should you have a spare £200,000 rattling around your piggy bank. This is as real-world as supercar testing gets.

When it comes to the coupe-equivalents of these cars, there is already an established pecking order, but the moment you lop the roof off, those verdicts are lost in the wind like an errant toupee. Convertibles are better for being seen in and therefore appeal to show-offs. The way they look, then, is more important, and without a roof to muffle the noises occurring behind your head, the way they sound is critical.

Both these play directly into the Huracán’s hands. I’m sitting on the wall of a grubby petrol station in Upper Brynamman when I hear it coming. An antisocial bark followed by a mass of mini explosions that pinball off the shops and houses lining the high street. Then I spot it – like a stealthy wedge of Caerphilly, with its impossibly short and steeply raked bonnet, matt grey paint and low, squared-off rear end. There’s nowt like a Lamborghini for making a low-key entrance.

The driver’s door swings open, and Chris Rowles falls out onto the oily forecourt bent double. He’s six foot three and complaining loudly (he does a lot of that) that the thinly padded seats are instruments of torture and don’t go back far enough, he also had to angle his neck to stop his head from scraping the roof. Funny that, because, on my four-hour motorway run, the 650S was nothing short of a delight, with its well-cushioned sports seats, famously supple ride thanks to its trick interconnected adaptive dampers, and turbocharged V8 that fades out to a background whisper when you keep the revs low and don’t wake the turbos. I choose not to tell Chris this, because I like my face.

Like a true prima donna, the Ferrari is running late, so we decide to get some proper driving under our belts before it arrives and steals all the attention. It’s a mesmerising road this, a road tester’s favourite, but for good reason. Smooth enough to keep all four tyres in contact with the tarmac, open enough to plan several corners ahead and from the point where the road peaks before curling its way down into the valley, there are views that steal the air from your lungs. Much like the McLaren when you find the courage and space to give the engine its head.

On paper, the 488’s 661bhp 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 has both the McLaren’s 641bhp 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 and the Lambo’s 602bhp 5.2-litre V10 licked, but, in reality, it’s the Brit that feels fastest. There’s something faintly old school about the way the engine takes a moment to register your right foot, then the turbos start sucking – like a tornado filling its lungs – before it unleashes a frightening amount of shove. It’s an endless game of chicken, man vs McLaren: how long can you keep it pinned? Who will crack first? On public roads, there’s an overwhelming, eye-widening amount of performance.

That’s not to say the Huracán is slow. On this road – on any B-road, in fact – it’s probably the faster point-to-point car, despite being the lardiest here by over 100kg. In the McLaren, you’re constantly keeping track of the boost, trying to keep the engine on the boil and managing grip at the rear. In the Lambo, you just point it vaguely in the right direction, deploy all 10 cylinders and the four-wheel-drive system keeps you glued to the road. It’s less interactive, sure, but ridiculously forgiving, while the scalpel-sharp throttle response and towering soundtrack is a constant reminder of why the eradication of naturally aspirated engines is a travesty.

I’ve driven a Huracán Coupe on track, and it tends to understeer on the limit – more so than its blood brother, the Audi R8 – and with an extra 120kg of chassis strengthening and roof mechanism to carry around, we can only assume the Spyder would fare no better. On public roads, though, it’s as neutral as David Dimbleby, but the electromechanical steering is the oddest here. A rubbery, variable-ratio mess that artificially springs back to its centre point and makes it hard to place the pointy front end. Not a deal-breaker, but then it depends on how you plan to use your car: on the King’s Road, who cares? On fast roads and race tracks, this stuff really matters.

And then the Blu Corsa Ferrari arrives looking utterly gorgeous, and we all flock to it likes moths to a Bunsen burner. There’s a hard-edged drama to the Huracán, while orange paint and fancy doors are always going to get the 650S noticed, but it’s the Ferrari that steals your heart on first sight. The lines are organic and sculptural, yet crisp and modern at the same time, and that badge still has the power to seduce more than any other. I waste no time in snatching the keys and taking it for an exploratory drive/damn good thrashing.

Ever since Ferrari announced it was ditching the 458’s imperious naturally aspirated V8 and swapping it for a smaller, turbocharged one, I’ve been quietly smouldering. But that was before I had driven it. Within metres, I’m grinning and flushed with a sense of relief – the whole car is shot through with the same DNA that made the 458 such a brilliantly evocative thing. From the featherlight, but super-alert steering to the way it makes its stratospheric performance so friendly and accessible.

OK, the engine doesn’t respond with quite the same zeal as the 458’s, but how could it with twin-blowers bolted on? Next to the McLaren, though, engine pick-up is a whole league quicker, and with so much torque at your disposal (561lb ft at 3,000rpm versus 398lb ft at 6,000rpm in the 458), dished out in increasingly large portions as you move up through the gears, the acceleration is gut-wrenchingly fast, even if you let the revs drop. And the sound? Being a flat-plane-crank V8 it has a similar tenor-pitched rumble to the 458 at low revs, then comes the sucking and whistling, followed by a hollow wail as you let the revs build. It can’t match the symphony of its predecessor, but honestly it’s not that far off, and there’s enough to encourage you to rev it out and enjoy the complexities. Bluntly, McLaren’s muter V8 needs to up its game.

But there’s more to these cars than just engines and noises – a truly modern supercar should be usable everyday, something I ponder as we head west for a photo call on Pendine Sands. I’m in the Ferrari, and rear visibility is fine, thanks to a slender two-panel roof that slots tightly under the rear deck in 14 seconds. The same can’t be said of the McLaren’s chunkier two-panel arrangement or the Lambo’s fabric hood, both of which take 17 seconds to stow, but live under a higher rear panel, obscuring the car directly behind you.

As for the gearboxes, all three upshift with startling immediacy, shift down with a flattering blip of revs and generally let you concentrate on keeping your 600bhp-plus supercar on the road. Two things: Firstly, I prefer the long column-mounted paddles in the Ferrari and Lamborghini – they are more tactile and satisfying than the McLaren’s much smaller wheel-mounted rocker switches, plus you always know where they are with some lock dialled on. Secondly, the Lambo’s engineered in kick in the back when you upshift in Corsa mode seems a bit needless, when the other two feel just as visceral in their most aggressive powertrain settings, but do so without pummelling your kidneys into pâté.

If you have to have the most comfortable, the 650S edges it, although the 488 in its Bumpy Road mode runs it close. In terms of interior quality, the Lambo takes it thanks to its close ties with Audi, but the Ferrari feels more special. The low, ribbed leather seats have a lot to do with that, as does the ingenious display on the glovebox (a £2,592 option) showing speed, gear and rpm, so passengers can quantify just how frightened they should be. In terms of design, the 488’s random spray of buttons is still a god-awful mess, but with the thick wheel and manettino switch in front of you, and the huge tachometer behind that, it just feels like an event.

On the inside, the 650S is starting to show its age. There’s nothing wrong with the quality – the slim steering wheel is a tactile highlight – but the portrait-orientated interface isn’t as intuitive to use as the Ferrari or Lambo’s digital instrument clusters, and we had a few electrical glitches along the way. The wing mirrors kept pointing themselves in all sorts of directions, and the passenger seatbelt alarm went off if you put so much as a Twix wrapper on it, despite this being a factory-fresh car.

We arrive at Pendine Sands, a perfectly flat and straight seven-mile beach, just in time for a council member to lower the bollards and let us roll down the slipway onto the sand. But not before a stern warning that we were there for a slow-speed photo shoot, not cocking around. “Fine by me” I thought when we arranged access, but once here it’s hard to resist. In the end, we snatch a cheeky single-car drift and a three-car burnout, before being shooed off by a rapidly approaching tide.

The next day, with 12 hours of sunshine to bask in, we formulate a plan to head east, back over the Severn Bridge and past Bristol to Cheddar Gorge – nature’s own echo chamber. The Huracán once again rises to the challenge, shrieking and crackling its way through every corner, shaking rock climbers from their holds and generally attracting unwanted attention. An open-top tourist bus pulls up to let punters take pictures of us. Seriously? We’re surrounded by Mother Nature in all her glory and still it’s the cars that are vacuuming up the attention. With the pesky tourists moved along, there are still important decisions to be made, because while the Lambo has several winning attributes, truly engaging handling is not one of them. So I hop between the Ferrari and McLaren using my patented road-test toothcomb.

Master the delayed power delivery, and the 650S is a joy to punt along at absurd speeds. The steering has more weight to it than the Ferrari’s and with a fraction more feel, while the carbon chassis (the only carbon tub here and the only one that doesn’t need any reinforcements) feels incredibly stiff. Even when you’re fully loaded in a corner and hit a bump, it stays straight and true. Problem is, the mere existence of the 675LT means we know what this chassis and engine is capable of, so what was perceived as an improvement over the 12C two years ago is now a significant step down from the 675LT. Shame, because there are flashes of genius in the 650S, but it still feels like a company in progress. Our advice? Wait for the drop-top 570S.

The 488 on the other hand feels like a company in its pomp. A company that can drop a turbocharged engine into its mid-engined money-maker for the first time and nail it straight out the gate. And it works wonderfully without a roof, bringing you closer to the world that’s rushing by, amplifying the less visceral but still soulful exhaust track and retaining all the otherworldly handling delicacy of the coupe.

You could build a case for any of these three cars. Sounds like a cop-out, I know, but you really could. The Lambo’s V10 shone in the gorge, while the McLaren is the choice for adrenaline junkies, but it’s the Ferrari that has all the bases covered. So, given the choice, it’s the 488 I’d take back to Streatham, the dodgy end.