Styling
Few things can stop traffic like a McLaren Artura Spider, especially one finished in luscious Tempest Blue (a paint from the Elite series that commands a whopping £4,400 on top of the car's list price). It's a stunning car in every respect, from its notably cab-forward stance to its metal-and-glass buttresses flying off the rear of the folding hard-top roof, and from the remarkably spoiler-free bodywork to the wealth of aerodynamic slats, vents and openings that not only channel air for stability, but work hard to keep bits of the bodywork cool.
What do we mean by that? We're talking about the 'chimney', that gold-coloured vent on the Artura's engine cover from which red-hot exhaust gases generated by the hot-inside-V twin-turbos of the mid-mounted 3.0-litre V6 are expelled from the engine bay. And some of the slots on the rear of the Spider are solely to ensure said gases are extracted, while simultaneously preventing them from melting the highly expensive paint off the Macca's tail-lip. Anyway, what with all the clever thermo-aerodynamics and the majestic 19-inch front, 20-inch rear forged alloys (another £4,500) and the McLaren Orange brake callipers (cost for this colour: £1,570) peeping out from behind the wheels' spokes, the Artura is completely mesmerising when viewed from the kerb.
And that's before you've even opened the dihedral doors upwards to give it the maximum jaw-dropping appeal for bystanders, either.
Interior
The cabin of the Artura can't quite match the exterior drama, but it's still a mighty fine place to be. It's quite compact in there, understandably, and getting into and out of the car with the roof in place does have an air of folding yourself into/dragging yourself out of something akin to an oversized
Lotus Elise. However, it's comfortable and well-appointed, with some real highlights like the exquisite paddle shifts, the machined-metal column stalks, the instrument cluster which moves with the steering wheel's adjustment, and the supportive seats; these particularly nice if finished in the Mojave Tan and Black colourway of our test car.
However, there were one or two areas in this less-than-2,000-miles-old Spider which were not up to snuff for a car at this level of the market. Such as a trim on the A-pillar not quite aligning properly with its neighbour, and a wavy line of stitching for the piping on the passenger-side fascia. There was also a bit of panelling underneath one of the buttresses on the outside which wasn't properly butted-up to the main strut, either. Minor, minor observations, sure, but at this end of the market, and this sort of price? You're expecting perfection, aren't you?
Practicality
Accepting that no convertible, mid-engined supercar is ever going to be capable of swallowing a metric tonne of clobber, you'll still have to make allowances for the McLaren's relative lack of practicality. There are door pockets, which are shaped in the bottom to prevent your loose items flying away if you open the dihedral to get out and forget about retrieving your stuff first, and there's also a narrow, shallow central cubby with some USB sockets within it underneath the armrest. But there's no glovebox at all, while the front boot is just 160 litres - and that's only excluding the charging cables and fire extinguisher which were in 'our' car, cutting further into the limited luggage space.
Performance
A car which weighs less than 1.5 tonnes (dry) and just 1,560kg with a driver and 90 per cent fluid load onboard, which has fully 700hp and 720Nm to call upon from its plug-in-hybrid drivetrain - how fast do you think it's going to be? Well, it's
faster. Honestly, the Artura Spider is outrageous. With its rapid-shifting SSG dual-clutch transmission and torque-infill from the 95hp e-motor practically eliminating any turbo lag, this thing fires forward ferociously from any speed and revs you have showing on its dials, if you use anything more than about 30 per cent throttle. It's an absolute animal, but its power delivery is beautifully calibrated so that it builds to a crescendo approaching the redline - so there's real reward in chasing revs in every gear (only do so on the roads in the lower cogs, though, because otherwise you'll end up in jail if you get caught).
McLaren says you get
Super-series performance from the Artura Spider in a car which is packaged and positioned in the company's line-up like a
Sports-series machine, and it's really hard to argue with that assertion. Then there's the noise. While maybe still not the most tuneful car we've ever heard, the V6 in the Artura - breathing through the carefully angled exit pipes of a Sports exhaust (a gripe: why is this a £4,700 option on a car like this, McLaren?!) - sounds much better than the flat-plane-crank M838T and M840T V8 engines in other Maccas. It's physically augmented by a diaphragm in the rear bulkhead that enhances its voice, but it's a gravelly, hard-edged bark the Artura Spider emits and we love it.
Do you want us to talk about the hybrid side of things? Because we can, and it's surprisingly impressive news in this regard. The Spider is supposed to be able to do 20 miles on its 7.4kWh battery alone, while you can get the engine to charge the battery on the move by simply pulling the lower of the left-hand column stalks. Even with this feature engaged, we managed to see a phenomenal 30.1mpg average when returning the McLaren to its base, down 160 miles of the M1 and M25, and across 717 wonderful miles in its company it gave back a still-brilliant 23.8mpg overall. For a 700hp, biturbo petrol supercar, that's little short of witchcraft.
Ride & Handling
It takes barely two miles behind the wheel of the Artura Spider to work out this is a jewel of a chassis set-up. For ride comfort, the McLaren is extraordinary. It soaks up lumps and bumps in the road surface with an aplomb that's astounding, when you look at how blinkin' low to the floor it is, and yet it's a cinch to place it on the roads, thanks to its impeccably calibrated controls and a fabulous level of visibility out of the cabin in all directions. For those times you're not extending its dynamic capabilities to the limit, the Artura is remarkably genial and pleasant.
And when you do unleash it, you find a supple, controlled and agile supercar that gets into a fantastic, invigorating and deeply rewarding flow on all the right roads. The steering is exemplary, with loads of weighting, feel and bite, while the suspension has enough give that the Artura presses as much of its rubber contact patches into the tarmac as it possibly can for the maximum amount of time. The result is a car that doesn't skitter, bounce or tramline alarmingly, and which instead breathes in sync with the topography of the surface - allowing its driver to exploit as much of that mighty drivetrain as they dare.
Yet it's not a boringly capable car, one in which you think you won't learn anything new about it with each and every journey. Instead, it commands your respect and transmits its rear-axle nature to its driver in every corner, so that you peel back fresh layers of kinematic information about the car with each mile that passes beneath its wheels. The Artura Spider is, commensurately, a thoroughly beguiling thing to drive for every single second you're behind its wheel.
Value
At £221,000 'basic' and fitted with £65,350-worth of options as tested, the Artura Spider is supposed to be the gateway into McLaren ownership, but it's pretty much pushing £300,000 as is. Mind you, any of the obvious rivals, like the GTS version of the
Ferrari 296 or a
Maserati MC20 (soon to become the daftly named 'McPura'), would set you back the same sort of cash. Even the last hybrid
Porsche 911 soft-top we drove was almost £200,000, and that has a 'mere' 541hp and nothing like the exceptionality of the Artura.
Verdict
The McLaren Artura Spider, taken as a whole, isn't quite perfect. We remain to be convinced by some of the material finishing, its practicality is not great (even for a car like this), and some of the things fitted to it that are pricey options feel like they really ought to be standard-fit. But that's just our professional critical nature kicking in; because, genuinely, in every other regard the McLaren delivers a seminal automotive experience. It's dynamically sensational, it looks glorious, it's incredibly approachable and daily-usable, and frankly it's probably in our all-time top five of cars we've ever had the privilege of driving. Maybe even top three. The Artura Spider is seriously,
seriously amazing.
