WE HAVE PUSHED OUR LUCK. McLaren need the Artura back in an hour. We are 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 are within a mile of each other. This could be interesting.
All of which makes this a perfect final test to conclude our 500 kilometres 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 is friendly and stress-free 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 they get into their second decade of car-making. It is the most comprehensively new model since modern-era McLaren road car production began with the MP4-12C in 2011.
It is 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
