This supercar has just one failing ... an unshapely behind

If you’re willing to reverse the McLaren Artura Spider into your garage so you don’t see its one fault, then I think you should definitely spend $525,010 buying one.

McLaren’s Artura Spider is a terrifically thrilling thing to drive and one that possesses three distinct kinds of speed.

Stephen Corby

3 min read

11:56AMOctober 11, 2024.

Updated 12:27PMOctober 11, 2024

How much do you care about what you look like from behind? Personally, I think one of Mother Nature’s rare kindnesses is that she often burns the first bald spot on a man at the back of his head, so he doesn’t have to see it. Other than in those magical change rooms in Target Country where you can see your own butt if you contort your neck like an owl, I would say I’ve spent very few minutes of my life contemplating my Atlas-like back, but it strikes me that I must have cared more about my rear view when I was young, as I went to a lot of trouble to grow, and care for, a particularly rodent-like mullet.

With the possible exception of sculptures, we spend little time examining works of art from behind, but when it comes to cars, designers are called on to make them look sumptuous and sizzling from all angles, a task that seems to have been too much for the folks at McLaren.

The natural competitor for the hybrid humdinger that is the new McLaren Artura Spider is Ferrari’s 296 GTS, a work of beauty that could make a dead artist weep through six feet of dirt if you parked it on top of him. The Ferrari’s rear end looks like the offspring of an F1 car and Emily Ratajkowski.

The backside of Ferrari’s 296 GTS ... a work of beauty.

Now, the McLaren Artura Spider is a fine-looking car, worthy of the appellation “super”, and its sexy butterfly doors give it a huge advantage in the gob-smacking stakes, but as I spent an unfortunate amount of time following a professional driver who’d been hired to slow me down at its Australian launch recently (honestly, what has happened to trust and responsibility, are journalists not notorious paragons of virtue?), it struck me that the design budget seemed to have run out at the rear.

It struck me that the design budget seemed to have run out at the rear.

For a start, they’ve left a big gap where you can see the Artura’s bits working, which is a bit like noticing the hole in some MAMIL’s lycra: once you’ve seen the jelly-white-hairless horror, you can’t look away. Then, above that, is an unshapely behind, which seems to have elbows instead of shoulders and knees instead of buttocks, topped by rear lights that look like the confused eyes of two robotic vacuum cleaners that have just bumped into one another.

Other than that, and the fact that the interior is a little more spartan than that of the Ferrari, I have no notes. The Artura Spider is a terrifically thrilling thing to drive and one that possesses three distinct kinds of speed.

Thanks to its hybrid set-up, you can drive it around town in silent EV-only mode, which somehow manages to feel less impressively thrusty than every other electric car I’ve ever driven. Realistically, no owner will ever do this, because slow supercars make no sense.

Switch to the Comfort setting and the Artura is allowed to call on its twin-turbo V6 engine as well as its E-Motor, for a combined 445kW and 700Nm, and what is remarkable is how pleasantly it rides over battered concrete roads, and how politely it performs.

A peek inside the Artura Spider.

Switch the Handling toggle to Track on one of Sydney’s streets and it will instantly make you sick, because the proactive damping control really does make a difference. But get out of town on a smooth, snaking road – as I was allowed to do for several whole moments – and the Track settings open up the second and third kinds of speed: insanely fast and utterly ridiculous. Up to about 4000rpm you feel frightened by the acceleration – far too much to even attempt to use full throttle. Get a bit braver and it will accelerate from that point to the top of its rev range as if The Flash has grown wheels and you’re on his back.

I fully believe McLaren’s claimed 0-200km/h claim of 8.4 seconds, and its top speed of 330km/h.

It is so wildly impressive that I fully believe McLaren’s claimed 0-200km/h claim of 8.4 seconds, and its top speed of 330km/h. And because you can drop the roof – in just 11 seconds – in this Spider, you can also enjoy the fact that this new version has had its exhaust flaps fiddled to create even more sonorous howls and explosions. Driving this thing fast is very close to a sensory overload.

Fortunately, it’s also so well engineered that you always feel, just barely, in control, with perfectly muscular steering and a race-car-hard brake pedal that can pull you up from Go Directly to Jail to “Oh, was that a police car?” in a blink. Gear changes, operated via beautiful metal paddles that feel like Batman might use them to slice and dice bad guys, are brutally swift (25 per cent faster than in the old model, apparently).

I also love that, uniquely, you can either push or pull each paddle to shift up or down, so if you’re some kind of insouciant lunatic you could actually drive it fast with one hand, presumably while adjusting your hair in the convertible’s rushing wind with the other.

If you’re willing to reverse the McLaren Artura Spider into your garage so that at least you personally never need to see its rear end, then I think you should definitely spend $525,010 on buying one.