McLAREN ARTURA
The 300-mile test
McLaren’s next chapter opens with the clean-sheet Artura. New platform, new V6 plug-in hybrid powertrain, new... everything. How does it feel?
NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD
We’ve pushed our luck. McLaren needs the Artura back in an hour. We’re busy enjoying some spectacular canyon roads a good bit more than an hour north of the car’s scheduled return point in Marbella. Distance and time are going to require a little stretching here. So is fuel. My eyes are darting back and forth from the distance-to-destination on the Google Maps display (linked from my phone to the new infotainment screen) to the estimated range on the new instrument cluster. They’re within a mile of each other. This could be interesting.
All of which makes this a perfect final test to conclude our 300 miles with the Artura. This is, after all, a car that needs to be fabulously engaging to drive and to handle beautifully; it also needs to be comfortable over a long distance; to have a user interface that’s friendly and stressfree to operate; and it also – with its box-fresh plug-in hybrid powertrain – needs to be energy-efficient. And up for a challenge.
The Artura (a name, not a code like previous core McLaren models; it combines ‘art’ and ‘future’) represents the next chapter for McLaren Automotive as it gets into its second decade of car making. It’s the most comprehensively new model since modern-era McLaren road car production began with the 12C in 2011.
It’s a new platform with a new carbon monocoque design (built in McLaren’s new Sheffield facility); new ‘futureproof ’ electrical architecture; new plug-in hybrid powertrain, including a new V6 engine and eight-speed transmission, integrated with the electric motor – and, for the first time in a McLaren, an electronically controlled limited-slip differential, or e-diff; new multi-link rear suspension; new interior architecture, and much more besides. Those elements will be the basis for McLaren’s next generation of models, all of which will have hybrid powertrains.
Duck under the butterfly door and climb in (a cleverly designed sill shape in the new chassis helps here) and you’re struck by McLaren’s new interior architecture: smart, sober and slick, with its new touchscreen tucked down below the dash’s centreline on what looks like a movable armature (but isn’t).
That low-set position means you need to do a fair bit of focusing and refocusing between the road ahead and the display below the dash’s centre line. The interface takes a bit of learning but works well enough and will become yet slicker over time with over-the-air updates. The car’s electrical architecture as a whole (ethernet-based, req
