2023 McLaren Artura hits the mark as a driver's car

The McLaren Artura is a bit of a breakthrough for the brand of sorts, given that it is the company's first series production plug-in hybrid supercar (the P1 was a hybrid too but that was a limited-run model). You would imagine that given its significance, McLaren would make a bigger deal about the car's electrification status.

The fact that it doesn't indicates how McLaren sees the Artura, as a bonafide performance machine rather than a groundbreaking green car for the future (colour notwithstanding). McLaren are surprisingly coy with details about the car's hybrid setup, and the brochure doesn't really mention things like how fast the battery takes to charge up, for example.

Clearly, those things aren't quite so important when it comes to showcasing the Artura's weaponry, but they are noteworthy nonetheless. For the record, the car can travel in electric silence for a distance of around 30km, and it takes about two and a half hours to charge up the Artura's battery from an AC charger.

But the thing is, you don't even need to plug it in to refill the battery, because the car can do it for you via the Max Charge mode, where the engine steps in to regenerate charge for the battery through energy recuperation. It does it pretty aggressively too, and essentially the harder you drive, the faster the battery gets recharged.

And what an engine. The Artura is very much unlike your typical mainstream hybrid car, which usually aims to make the transition between electric and petrol power as seamless as possible. Instead, the Artura's 3.0-litre V6 twin-turbo certainly makes its presence known, roaring to life once the electric motor hands over the reins to the combustion engine, and the abrupt awakening is boisterous enough to jolt you awake if you aren't quite prepared for it.

It's only then you realise that the electric motor's true purpose is to serve the car's performance. Put your right foot down and the car rushes you towards the horizon with almost no delay, and before you know it, you're approaching highly illegal speeds, fast enough to make you fear for your licence.

There's a hefty 671hp and 720Nm of torque available on tap from the combined petrol and electric drivetrain, and 0-100km/h comes up in 3 seconds flat if you're brave enough to attempt the launch control sequence (I chickened out), while top speed ranks at a jail-warranting 330km/h.

But even if you're not attempting to break the land speed record, the Artura proves to be a driver's delight when you find some bendy bits of road. As befitting its track-focused nature, the Artura powers through corners with the kind of precision that imbues confidence in the driver thanks to its plentiful grip and absolutely flat composure.

There's still enough power to kill you if you overcook it of course, but the threshold to breach those limits are pretty high, and you have to be driving like an absolute idiot to get things horribly wrong.

There are of course tradeoffs to driving any supercar, and the Artura is no exception. The car is pretty hard-edged, and while the ride quality is reasonable by supercar standards, it still leaves you pretty knackered and exhausted after a long journey.

Parking the car too is an extremely tricky affair, exacerbated by the heavy-set steering, large turning circle, massive blind spots, and the general width of the car, which is further hampered by the upward-opening scissor doors that would unwittingly knock into the car next to you if you aren't careful.

The interior takes a fairly minimalist approach, with a small portrait-style screen being all you get for accessing the 'infotainment'. A lot of the functions are actually accessible via the driver's instrument panel, but it requires a bit of fiddling with the stalks (four in total), and the powertrain and handing settings are adjustable via the two toggle switches atop the instrument binnacle. It takes a while but you'll end up getting used to them quite quickly once you've figured them out.

It's also quite the attention-grabber too. Certainly, any supercar is guaranteed to turn heads on the road, but the Artura seemed to draw more eyes than usual, perhaps partly down to its fetching green shade. You get excited looks from children, thumbs up gestures from young folks, and just a general sense of approval all round.

Can't afford the big one? Get the small one then (Photo: Cheng Yu Hung)

Which is all well and good, but the Artura's greatest appeal is really all about the driving. It'll be a stretch to call the hybrid setup a gimmick, because it really does work as intended, in the sense that as much as it is meant for urban zero emissions driving, it is also designed to complement the car's performance. Viewed in that lens, the Artura certainly deserves much more credit for how it blends sustainability with driving excitement in the way that it has.

McLaren Artura

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This article was first published in CarBuyer.