McLaren Artura Spider

The launch of the Spider has given McLaren the opportunity to take the Artura to a new level of brilliance

- STUART GALLAGHER

TO SAY THAT MCLAREN'S ARTURA HAD a troubled birth would be something of an understatement. Delayed media drives, when they did take place, ended in failed HVAC systems, split oil-lines and fires. This naturally resulted in delayed deliveries of customer cars, which in turn meant the P&L statement took a hit.

Despite this, 2000 Artura coupes have been delivered since the end of 2022 - and now they are effectively obsolete. Sorry existing Artura owners, but McLaren's 'facelifted' Artura, which now includes the open-top Spider variant, is such a comprehensive makeover delivering such strong results in terms of how it drives that if you stepped from the original to the new you'd be forgiven for thinking they were two different cars. It's nearly on a par with when Porsche claimed the Gen 2 997-series 911 was merely a facelift despite its new engine, gearbox and interior.

With the roof panel tucked away (requiring eight e-motors to manipulate the 15kg section of reinforced composite plastic) the new glass buttresses sparkle as the sun catches them, while the revised engine cover features new cooling intakes for the hybrid V6 now that there's no room for the coupe's 'cooling stacks'. But the Spider still looks very much like every other McLaren. Hopefully new head of design Tobias Sühlmann has been given plenty of blank sheets of paper to sketch what comes next. Beating the engine cooling upgrades for subtlety are the pair of teeny, tiny Gurneys on the leading edge of the windscreen header rail. They're so subtle they require a McLaren tech to point them out to you, the equivalent of an F1 car's new front wing element that only Ted Kravitz can spot.