Enough torture. The missing front suspension element is...a front stabilizer bar. The MP4-12C hasn't got one. Go ahead. Scroll back a couple of pictures and have another look. I'll wait.

What the McLaren has fitted instead is a complex series of tubes. These hoses (yellow) connect to the opposite side to form a hydraulic stabilizer bar that can be computer controlled. But to make it work they must cross over one another: the compression valve on this side connects to the rebound valve on the other side, and vice-versa.

Imagine you're in a sweeping bend. Naturally, the body wants to roll toward the outside, and this causes the outer shock to compress while the inner one grows. With this system, the pressure rise in the outer shock is re-routed across the car so it can repel the extension of the inner one, and vice-versa. But this only works if the hoses are "cross-wired", rebound to compression.

Here's another cool bit. There are valves, accumulators and electronics between the two interconnected hoses, and their presence allows the roll stiffness to be continuously variable, even during a single corner. For example: the system can be programmed to roll-in softly then firm-up as g-forces rise.

You can't do anything like that with a regular anti-roll bar, a simple bent piece of steel that tries to counteract body roll by simple torsion. Such a bar can only have one roll stiffness value. Even the adjustable ones have to be physically moved and "set" into one position.

Sebastian Loeb's all-conquering Citroen world-rally car once had a setup like this, and it was so effective it was later banned. More recently, a similar (but far less exquisite-looking) system is offered as an option in the new 2011 Infiniti QX-56 SUV.