Road resistance: WISH drive editor puts McLaren’s hybrid-powered Artura to the test
His view? It needs a racetrack to reveal its true prowess.
The only thing in life more psychologically penetrating than being wrong is having to admit someone else is right. This seems to be particularly excruciating for politicians, but I must admit that, on the handful of occasions it’s happened in my life, I’ve found it unpleasant.
It was with unbounded surprise, then, that I found myself acknowledging that an employee of mine was correct when he offended me by reporting that the McLaren Artura I’d lent him to take for a drive (yes, I am a HELL of a boss) was slightly uninvolving, less exciting than he’d hoped and even a bit “digital”.
This made me suggest he should pull his digit out and get real, because I had attended the adrenaline-filled launch of this hybrid-powered hyperbole machine a few months prior on a racetrack in Sydney and found it almost dangerously exciting, and as involving as looking at sharks in an aquarium from inside the glass.
I did wonder, at the end of my effervescing review of that experience, whether the 500kW and 720Nm you get from its combination of an E-motor and a 3.0-litre twin-turbo six-cylinder engine would be simply too much for public roads. While I looked forward to hitting 100km/h in 2.9 seconds off the lights, I was unlikely to test its ability to smash its way to 200km/h in just 8.3.
What I did try on our heavily policed roads was the Artura’s EV mode, which it quietly starts up in every time (if you ever want to disappoint a small child – because you are evil, I guess – just start up this McLaren in front of a young one; their initial excitement at seeing its butterfly doors will melt like a dropped ice cream when you drive away without a bark from the engine).
Apparently, this very modern McLaren can hit 130km/h while running on electric power only, but I ran out of patience well before then because it was almost unforgivably quiet, and only middlingly fast. An Artura in electric mode is possibly the only thing worse than a hamburger served between two pieces of lettuce.
Fortunately, in its more interesting modes the V6 angrily crackles to life, as if it’s as offended as I was about it being left out. While it’s nowhere near as loud as a supercar should be, there are certainly some aural thrills and shrills when you explore the upper rev ranges in the Artura, and the higher you go the better.
Choose to combine the McLaren’s electric shove with its peaky, powerful engine by pushing Race mode (which does feel like it should be road illegal) and you are delivered the kind of ferocious acceleration that makes it feel as though your body is coming apart.
“Argh! My arms are being torn from my shoulders. Oh no, my spine is being pushed through my sternum. Urgh! I think my eyes are going to splat the back of my skull. No, actually my whole head is going to explode.”
What this adds up to is the kind of speed that you simply can’t enjoy in town, because there’s just not enough space, anywhere. The real world feels like a blurry, slightly cruel video game.
I took the Artura out of town to some properly empty and winding roads, however, and it was there that I was able to recapture the magic that so impressed me on a track. It grips the road magnetically and corners with a kind of heavy, thrusty effortlessness, while the soft, squishy human in the driver’s seat definitely feels the effort.
And yet, as fast as the car undeniably was, I felt – away from the freedom of track driving – too slow for it, which raised the fear that the Artura was yawning at my sweaty efforts, albeit politely, behind its hand. It’s quite likely I got from one end of that road to the other faster than ever before – and I’ve driven it a lot – but the look on my face was more quizzical than one of ecstasy.
On the track, I loved this McLaren, it’s a great car at eight or nine-tenths, but you have to park that madness, or at least put a leash on it, around town.
Nor does it look, aside from the impressive doors, quite as sexy as it should at $449,500 (my daughter declared that it was “trying too hard”). I also had some gremlin issues, with the car deciding I couldn’t have manual mode, no matter how nicely I asked.
I still like this McLaren a lot, I really do, and on a track its torque-filled hybrid punchiness makes it a monster out of corners, but in the real world it’s just a tiny bit … digital. Like using a supercomputer to do your two times tables. This does not, of course, mean that I was wrong, it just means that I now need to save up for a racetrack as well as a McLaren.
McLAREN ARTURA
Engine 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6, plus E-Motor
Power 500kW
Torque 720Nm
Transmission Eight-speed dual-clutch automatic, rear-wheel drive
Fuel Economy 4.6 litres per 100km
Price $449,500
This story originally appeared in the February issue of WISH.
