The unrestricted portions of the autobahn are one of the few public roads in the world where a person can push a car to its top speed without worrying about receiving a hefty speeding ticket. In this case, AutoTopNL gets ahold of a modified McLaren 720S with bigger turbos, providing a total output of 950 horsepower.
The autobahn is crowded early in the video, so the driver has to be careful pushing too hard. When the traffic clears, he can hit a GPS-indicated 195 miles per hour (313 kilometers per hour).
At three minutes and 50 seconds into the video, traffic finally becomes light enough for a second high-speed run. This time, the car’s speedometer briefly flashes 211 mph (339 kph), and the GPS shows 208 mph.
With so many other cars on the road, the driver can’t go any faster. Later runs show the GPS displaying 174 mph (280 kph) and 190 mph (306 kph), which are still high speeds for a public road.
The 720S debuted in 2017 as a replacement for the 650S. The new model featured a mid-mounted, twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 with a factory rating of 710 horsepower and 568 pound-feet of torque. A seven-speed dual-clutch transmission sends the output to the rear wheels. This setup gets the supercar to 62 mph in 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 212 mph.
Maybe it’s the microphones, but this 720S sounds fairly docile at low revs. Above 5,500 rpm, the noise gets much more raucous.
Regarding high-speed driving on public roads, Motor1.com got to take a 765LT, the 720S’ hotter sibling in the lineup, on a highway in Ketchum, Idaho, and legally go as fast as we could. It was part of the Sun Valley Tour de Force that raised money for Idaho’s Hunger Coalition food pantry by letting folks push their cars well into triple-digit speeds. The speedometer showed us going 203 mph, but the GPS displayed 196 mph.
Here’s what it’s like to drive the 720S Spider:
