McLaren 570S Spider Drops, Is Unquestionably Sexy

All of the fun of the Sport Series, now with a retractable top.

byWill Sabel Courtney|
McLaren 570S Spider Drops, Is Unquestionably Sexy
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McLaren has dropped the curtain on the drop-top version of its Sport Series supercars ahead of its formal debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed later this month. Not surprisingly, it's called the McLaren 570S Spider; and not surprising, it looks sexy as hell. 

Indeed, with the power hardtop erected, you'd be hard-pressed at first glance to distinguish the new 570S Spider from the 570S coupe that's been around for a couple years. Unless you have a Sawzall and a willingness to deface $200,000 sports cars, however, you'll never be able to remove the center section of the roof in just 15 seconds the way the Spider can with the touch of a button—and good luck getting it back in place again in the same amount of time. (Better yet, it can perform that trick at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.) Still, while it may look almost identical, the changes are enough to warrant some aerodynamic tweaks; to compensate for the slight shift in the design of the Sport Series's rear, the rear spoiler stretches an extra 0.47 inches into the air when standing at attention. 

Transforming the Sport Series into a roadster added a tick over 100 pounds to the chassis, but you wouldn't realize it to look at the specs. The power generated by the twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter's V8  is identical to the coupe version at at 562 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque, all of which is shunted to the fat rear wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. Yet just like the coupe, the McLaren 570S Spider vaults from 0 to 62 miles per hour in a reported 3.2 seconds on the way to a 204-mph top speed. 

Indeed, other than the top, the 570S Spider is more or less identical to its cope brother. It's still built on the carbon fiber Monocell, it still has those groovy dihedral doors, it still comes loaded with all the cool performance features the wankers in Woking have dreamed up over the years, and it still offers the chance to personalize the thing out the wazoo with the help of the McLaren Special Operations division.

Considering how exceptional the 570S coupe and 570GT have proven themselves to be in our hands, we at The Drive are sure this McLaren will prove itself every bit one of the fastest, most entertaining supercars you can buy for a base price of £164,750 (which works out to about $210,000 at current exchange rates). But we are kind of hoping that the Sicilian Yellow paint that's being launched with the car looks better in person than it does in the pictures below.

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