My One Night Stand With A Supermodel
by John McElroy
When the good people at McLaren rang to see if I’d be interested in taking an Artura overnight for a test drive, I accepted before they even finished asking.
It’s quite a car this Artura, with a history of firsts for McLaren. It’s a hybrid for one thing, and a plug-in hybrid at that–one of those super high-performance kinds of hybrids, where an electric motor is added more for performance than for fuel economy. But it’s also there so you can drive in EV mode in those European city centers where only electrics are allowed. And no doubt in some circles it gives McLaren some green cred.
McLaren actually made a hybrid before this, the extremely low-production $1.1 million P1. But that went out of production about eight years ago. And at $233,000 the Artura is not only far more “affordable,” it will be made in significantly higher production volume than the P1 ever was.
Another significant difference, for McLaren, is that the Artura’s primary propulsion comes from a V6 engine with twin turbos. That’s a first for the company, which heretofore only bolted turbo V8s into its chassis.
It’s also only the second brand-spanking-all-new-clean-sheet production car that the company has done since it started making cars in 2010 under the banner of McLaren Automotive. And McLaren brought this one in-house, meaning that up to now all its carbon fiber monocoques were made in Austria by a supplier, but from now on they’ll be made at the McLaren Composite Tech Center in Sheffield, UK.
Even though McLaren changed everything on this car compared to its predecessor, the GT, you’ll see more than a passing resemblance between the two. At first glance you may even wonder why there doesn’t seem to be much of a change. But as you study the styling, you’ll see that the Artura has softer lines, is sleeker, and to my eye at least, has more of a race car stance.
As long as they were changing everything, the engineers were able to clean up a few things. The seat controls are far easier to find and use than on the GT. The sound system seems richer and clearer. The center screen is delightfully compact and usable because you can rest your hand on it and steadily select the icon or section you want with your thumb. The seats are excellent, both comfortable and supportive. And the interior is exquisitely crafted.
But when you belt yourself in and fire up the engine, the Artura reveals a quirky personality. For one thing, at first, you don’t get any engine power to move the car. Even though the V6 has rumbled awake, you’re only able to move on electric power. That’s especially true when you select Reverse because there isn’t a reverse gear in the transmission. The only way to back up is with electric power.
The reason you can’t use piston power to move the car at first is that you have to wait until the catalytic converter lights up. So you drive for, I don’t know, maybe a minute or so until whammo, you’re moving by pistons instead of electrons. But there is a short cut to get right to the engine.
On each side of the cowl that houses the instrument gauges are rocker switches. On the left is one that allows you to choose different settings for the suspension, on the right one for the engine. Both switches offer a choice of Comfort, Sport, or Track. If you select Track for the engine, you get instant access to the V6 and its twin turbos.
BTW, after trying all the possible combinations in various street-driving situations, my preference was to run in Track mode for the engine and Comfort for the suspension.
On the road, the Artura doesn’t like driving at steady speeds. An annoying droning resonates through the cabin, especially at low cruising speeds. It’s petulant. My notes say: bad NVH. And worse yet, it tends to drown out the much-improved sound system. Without all that buzzing the Artura would come across as a much more sophisticated car.
I also lost patience with the automatic transmission. It wouldn’t shift when I thought it should, and did when I didn’t. It’s prissy. So I decided to take things into my own hands and ended up using the paddle shifters in all my driving.
The hybrid system also seemed to not be sure when to feed in ICE or EV power or combine the two, but selecting the engine’s Comfort mode straightened everything out and made it work well.
As with many modern cars, the Artura can be a bit of a nag. You’ll hear a “bong” when you go over the speed limit, and another “bong” when the suspension returns to its normal setting. You see, the Artura sits so low that it’s a good idea to hit the button to raise the suspension if you’re going over a steep curb at the end of a driveway, and then it “bongs” when it automatically resets itself.
You’ll also hear an electronic “chew, chew, chew” if a tire goes over a lane marking on the road and you’re not using the turn signal. There’s probably a way to turn this warning off but I was more interested in learning how to drive this thing fast than to get rid of any of that chew, chew, chewing.
And make no mistake about it, the Artura wants to go fast. The moment you really let it rip tells you everything you need to know about this car. No more droning engine noise. No more annoying NVH. No more complaints about nothing. It transforms from prissy and petulant to totally purposeful.
It’s really fast. It’s very well planted. It’s firm and predictable at the limit. The steering is precise and has little of the kickback I found with the GT. Take the Artura through turns as fast as you dare and you’ll still come away feeling that you could have gone even faster. The brakes are fantastic, ceramic rotors no less, and it will take a bit of practice to find out how deep you can really go into corners, because with each run you’ll find you can go even deeper.
I never did find the limits on this car, but then, I never got the chance to take it to a track. Just a few circular on-ramps, some back country roads, and a number of open spaces here and there. But even that was enough to whet my appetite.
And when they came to take the car back, I found myself standing there, hands in my pockets, wistfully watching it go away, and wishing I had more time to drive it.
