Malaga, Spain – If you’re wondering, ‘Artura’ is a portmanteau of ‘Art’ and ‘Future’ and has nothing to do with Guinness Stout’s series of ‘To Arthur’ advertising campaigns.
And a refreshing pint of stout Stout was exactly what we needed after an invigorating day spent with the McLaren Artura on a combination of serpentine winding roads and the devilishly technical Ascari circuit.
If you haven’t noticed, McLaren has shifted from its technical, alpha-numeric empirical nomenclature (like MP4-12C, 650S, 720S and so on) to actual names for its sportscars, like Senna, Speedtail, Elva, Saber and now, Artura.
Why? We’re told that using the numerals gave rise to certain expectations about its technical performance and each successive model was (naturally) expected to surpass its predecessor in terms of outright numbers, but this shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all.
As long-time readers will know by now, hard numbers tell only a small part of the story. Think of it as reading the back-cover synopsis to any best-selling novel, because the nuances in the full story that transform it from blah to bombastic are lost due to the brevity of the synopsis.
By that token, the bare specs of the Artura are just the tip of the iceberg. Naturally, you’d be tempted to compare it to Ferrari’s recent release, the similarly compact, mid-engined/rear-drive 296 GTB / GTS, which is also powered by a twin-turbo 2.9-litre V6 matched to a 7.4kWh e-motor.
Having driven both the 296 GTB and the Artura on both road and track, we should qualify that save for the fact both brands use e-power to boost performance (as opposed to militantly advancing a clean/green agenda), there are sufficient dynamic differences between the two to help justify the est. S$200k price gap in Singapore.
