McLaren 720S vs Mahindra XUV500

What's the difference?

Past McLarens have been accused of being a bit soulless, but this one is alive. The last time I felt like this in a car was a Ferrari F12, one of the scariest but most brilliant cars I've ever driven. Except the 720S isn't scary on the road, just sheer genius.

The 720S doesn't necessarily beat the competition but it opens up new ways of doing supercar things. It's a car that looks amazing, is more than fit for purpose but has a wider range of talents than the others. 

That makes it ever more compelling, both as a piece of automotive brilliance to admire, andl as something to consider when you've got half a Sydney apartment to spend on a car.

Australian roads await, but the drive through rural English country roads and villages was a great preview. All I can say is: gimme one.

This petrol-powered and well-priced XUV500 W6 might mark Mahindra's most convincing effort at cracking Australia's congested SUV market, but we're still not completely convinced.

That said, it's certainly cheap, the ownership credentials stack up and it's a very comfortable way to transport seven people.

The 720S has received mixed reviews but nobody will say it isn't striking. I love it - every designer says their influence is a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (designer Melville even jokes about it), but you really can see it in the 720S, especially in the cockpit design, which looks like a glass canopy from that surveillance jet.

McLaren's signature dihedral doors, which go all the way back to the 1994 McLaren F1, are substantial, with a double skin to act as a serious piece of aero kit.

Melville told me in January that he thinks the cars look shaped by nature, using the example of a stone left in a stream to erode. The 720S is full of details evoking that image, with a clean, taut surface. Where everyone complained that the 12C was "designed in a wind tunnel", the 720S looks designed by the wind. In the carbon and aluminium, it looks extraordinary.

One of the most talked about features are those headlights - almost always finished in black, they're known as "the socket". When you get close you see slim LED DRLs, small but powerful headlights, and you then discover two radiators behind them. Follow it through and the air exits through the bumper, around the wheels and then through the door. It's quite something.

Inside is the McLaren we've come to know and love, but with a clever kicker. The dash panel looks lifted from a race car - but with far nicer graphics. Switch to "active" mode, turn everything up to Track and the panel swings down and presents you with a minimised set of instruments to reduce distraction and make up for a lack of head-up display - just speed, get and, revs.

There's no getting away from the fact the XUV500 is not the sleekest, prettiest SUV in the pack. But it's not ugly, either. More that it looks like it's doing its best with a design philosophy hatched a generation or two ago.

Its best angle by far is when viewed straight on, where the piano-black grille, dual bonnet bulges and complicated (read: a little weird) headlight clusters all add some road presence to Mahindra's only SUV.

A side-on viewing, however, is less satisfying, where a combination of strangely placed and super-sharp body creases (including one over the rear wheelarch, which adds a Harbour Bridge-style crescent to the otherwise-straight window line) and serious rear overhang give the XUV500 an inescapable awkwardness.

Inside, expect a vast collection of rock-hard (though nicely patterned) plastics, with the ambiance rescued somewhat by the clean-looking and vertical central control unit, which is home to the media screen and air-con controls. 

Ready for some hashtag real talk? There are better-looking and better-feeling seven-seat SUVs out there. But there aren't many that start at $25,990 drive-away. And I think that's Mahindra's point.

For a supercar, there is a surprising amount of space in the cabin. You can strap 220 litres of (hopefully) soft stuff on the rear shelf behind the seats and there's a 150-litre boot under the nose. You can store your track gear under there, including helmet, or even cram in a few soft bags for a weekend away.

Again, unusually a for a supercar, you're also  treated to a couple of storage cubbies in the centre console.

There's plenty of room in cabin for two bodies and the driver's seat offers lots of adjustment. Despite being so close to the front wheels, your feet have space even for my ridiculous duck feet to fit easily. There's even enough headroom for those over six feet, although the glass portholes in the top of dihedral doors might not be so welcome in an Australian summer.

Pretty damn practical, actually, regardless of whether you want to carry people or cargo. Carrying both at the same time, however, is tricky.

But let's start with people. There is a huge amount of room in the third row of the XUV500, a space with enough head and legroom to put plenty of its competition to shame.

Thanks to second-row seat backs that fold flat, before the the entire seat lifts up and pushes forward, climbing into seats six and seven isn't too big a drama, either. 

We rarely say this about seven-seat cars, but at 175cm, I'd feel plenty comfortable back there on a longer drive. There are two air vents in the third row, too, along with bottle storage and side-seat storage for thin items.

All XUV500's are fitted with a 70-litre fuel tank. 

The space in the middle row is ample as well, and you'll find three ISOFIX attachment points, one for each of the three seats. There's also a door pocket in each rear door and storage nets on the rear of the two front seats. A pull-down divider that separates the back seat is home to two cupholders, matching the two for front seat riders. 

The only downside to all this people-lugging happiness is that, with the third row of seats in place, there is absolutely no room for luggage. Mahindra doesn't quote a litre storage figure when seven are seated (mostly because it would probably be embarrassing to write "one litre"), but trust us, you'll be lucky to squeeze a soft backpack in the boot with all seats in place.

Things improve considerably when you drop the third row of seats, though, which unlocks 702 litres of storage, and that number climbs to 1512 litres with the second and third row folded down.

Make no mistake, this Mahindra kills the competition on price. The entry-level W6 version will cost you a lean $25,990, while the fruited-up W8 version will set you back $29,990. You can even have an AWD W8 for $32,990. The best part? All of those are drive-away prices.

Go for the W6, and you can expect 17-inch alloy wheels, cloth seats, air-con with vents (powered by a second compressor) in the second and third row, cornering headlights with DRLs, front and rear fog lights, cruise control, rear parking sensors and a 6.0-inch multimedia screen linked with a six-speaker stereo.

Spring for the W8, and you'll add leather seats, a reversing camera, tyre-pressure monitoring and a bigger, 7.0-inch screen with standard sat-nav.

The 720S runs a 4.0-litre version of McLaren's familiar flat-plane crank twin-turbo V8. Power is up to 537kW (or 720PS, hence the name) and torque up almost 100Nm to 770Nm, from 678. McLaren says 41 percent of the components are new.

A seven-speed twin clutch sends power to the rear wheels and the 1283kg dry (down 106kg from the 650S) monster hits 100km/h in 2.9 seconds, surely a cautious claim. The more alarming 0-200km/h clam is a terrifying 7.8 seconds, half a second quicker than its closest rival, the 488 GTB. That is seriously, insanely quick, while top speed is equally bonkers at 341km/h.

Instead of a complicated and heavy active differential, the 720S uses the rear brakes and various other methods to get the same effect. It's one of several ideas pinched from F1, some of them now banned.

There's a diesel engine currently available, but the clock is ticking - Mahindra expects it to be phased out within six months. But the big news here is the new petrol engine, a turbocharged 2.2-litre unit good for 103kW/320Nm. It's paired exclusively with an Aisin-developed six-speed automatic transmission, and will send it's power to the front or all four wheels.

Mahindra doesn't quote official performance figures, but those engine outputs hardly scream excitement, do they?

McLaren claims the European combined cycle could return 10.7L/100km, but we have no way of knowing if that is accurate because we weren't mucking about on the day we had the car.

Local numbers are yet to be confirmed, but after an admittedly vigorous local test, the on-board computers was reading 13+ litres per 100km. All XUV500's are fitted with a 70-litre fuel tank.  

One of the biggest changes from 650 to 720 is the new Monocage II carbon fibre tub. The drop in overall weight is partly because the cage now includes the windscreen hoop, which previously was metal. Kerb weight with all fluids and a 90 percent full fuel tank (don't ask why 90 percent, I don't know either) it weighs 1419kg, giving it the same power-to-weight ratio as a Bugatti Veyron. Yikes.

The 720S is an astonishing car. We always say you can pootle in a modern supercar, but the 720S is so user-friendly, maneouvreable and so easy to see out of - there are no significant blind spots with an almost entirely glass roof - you can tackle city and country in comfort mode and actually be comfortable. Comparatively, a Huracan goes all blergh in Strada mode and the 488 GTB never stops begging you to kick it in the guts. The McLaren is easy, liveable and smooth. 

I was driving a left-hand drive car in the UK, which should have been a complete nightmare, but it was fine - the vision is excellent, particularly over the shoulder. 

But when you do decide to kick the 720S into action, it's wild. The acceleration is brutal, the handling impeccable and the ride, oh, the ride. No supercar can handle bumps, irregularities and flat out poor surfaces like the McLaren. The 540C's ride is incredible as it is, but the 720 is just wow.

Because it's quite light, the nose goes where you point it, the huge brakes have less to stop, the towering power less to push. The steering in the 720S is well-weighted but has tons of feel - you know what's going on underneath the double-wishbone sprung front wheels and you can adjust what you're up to accordingly. The stability system is excellent, too. Never overbearing or abrupt, where talent ends and the help begins is delightfully blurry.

The new engine is a bit more tuneful than past McLarens - there's even a loud-start party trick - but it's not loud and overbearing. You'll hear turbos whisting, sighing and pshawing, a deep bassy exhaust note and some awesome intake roar. But there's not much off-throttle character. It does at least do away with the histrionics of the Italians.

The only serious drama is the amount of noise bouncing around the cabin over about 100km/h. There's a lot more glass than sound-soaking Alcantara, which explains some of the extra tyre racket over a 650S. You can't have everything, I guess.

About as old school as rocking a pair of button-up tracksuit pants with a Run-DMC cassette stuffed into your Walkman.

On a straight and unchallenging road, there's stuff to like about the petrol-powered XUV500. The engine, while gruff under heavy acceleration, doesn't feel too wheezy when you're not asking a great deal of it, and nor is the cabin overly loud at suburban speeds. It's a comfortable space for driver and passengers, too, and the gearbox performed seamlessly on our short test drive.

But that's about where the good news ends. There's an unshakeable agricultural feel to the way this Mahindra SUV goes about its business, and nowhere is that more obvious than through the steering wheel, which has only a vague and difficult relationship with the the front tyres, making it seriously tricky to approach twisting roads with anything approaching confidence.

The steering is slow and cumbersome - light when you first begin turning the wheel, with a ton of weight appearing by surprise midway through the cornering process - and it has a tendency to fight back should the front wheels find a bump or corrugation in the road, too. 

The body lolls about when challenged, too, and the tyres are quick to give up their grip on tighter corners. All of which would give it a certain retro charm if it wasn't so very new, and I must admit I was cackling maniacally on some of the more twisting roads.

But it's simply not a car I could live with.

Expect dual front, front-side and curtain airbags (though the latter don't extend to the third row of seats), along with rear parking sensors and ESP. Stepping up to the W8 trim adds a reversing camera with dynamic guidelines. The XUV500 was awarded a four-star (out of five) ANCAP assessment when tested in 2012.

The 720S comes with McLaren's three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty with roadside assist. McLaren will want to see you every 12 months or 20,000km, which is quite unusual at this level.

All XUV500s are covered by a five year/100,000km warranty (though the final two years apply only to the drivetrain), along with five years of complimentary roadside assistance.

The XUV500 is also covered by Mahindra's capped-price servicing program for the first three years of ownership, and will require servicing every six months or 10,000km.