A McLaren In Winter: 2025 McLaren Artura First Drive Review

PONTIAC, Mich. – When someone hands you the keys to a 2025 McLaren Artura Spider in late November, you do not hesitate. You get in the car and go. Anywhere. Time and the season are fleeting, and faster than the final brown and orange leaves will drop, this supercar’s year will soon expire.

Immediately upon taking delivery of the Artura Spider, I set out on a cold yet sunny morning. The convertible top would be dropping. I brought a knit hat and you only live once, right? The Artura Spider is the ‘base’ McLaren, starting around a quarter of a million dollars. Sixth man in the NBA kinda money, but not necessarily generational wealth. Make a few good choices and get a few bounces, and you could find yourself behind the wheel of this McLaren.

wI depress the brake pedal, tap the orange start button … and nothing. Right. This is a hybrid. The Artura will start as quietly as a Tesla, which is anticlimactic when I’m expecting an explosion behind my ears, like the shock and awe of the V8-powered McLaren 750S I tested earlier this year.

I ease out of my driveway, still in electric power. OK, I think, this is kind of cool. Slipping into late rush hour traffic, I encounter police on patrol and plodding commuters. So much for seizing the moment. As I make my way west, I’m still in electric mode, I realize, and the Artura offers up to 11 miles of pure electric driving. Suddenly, like the winter blast I’m expecting to drop from the clouds, the V6 rumbles on, its guttural sound hanging in the 37-degree air.

I’m done playing Prius. When the light turns, I take off, the McLaren’s gas engine and throaty exhaust rippling through the leafy suburbs as the Artura turns from angel to demon.

This McLaren has many personalities, and I tap the powertrain into Sport mode with a button to the right of the steering wheel and tune the chassis to Sport via another toggle to the left. McLaren keeps things relatively simple, with knobs and buttons that perform obvious tasks. The small infotainment screen is overly basic, but who really cares?

I reach Woodward Avenue, a famed stretch in and around Detroit that has many historic claims to fame, from drag racing in the 1960s and ‘70s to the rolling Dream Cruise that draws hundreds of thousands each summer. It’s a good spot to stretch out the powertrain, and jabbing the throttle, I reach the posted 50 mph limit in a blink. McLaren says the Artura Spider will hit 60 in three seconds, a touch slower than the coupe.

When I pin the pedal, I have 690 horsepower and 531-lb-ft of torque at my disposal, capable of delivering me to 205 mph if I had access to the M1 Concourse racetrack I pass on my left. The all-aluminum twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 teamed with a battery-powered e-motor makes for a prodigious yet imminently driveable supercar. McLaren was an early advocate of hybrids in the world of exotics, and it has come a long way from the P1. That said, 11 miles of EV range isn’t much, though perhaps that’s more of a vanity metric. I’d suggest McLaren try to push the figure closer to 20 miles of range, which then becomes a usable distance. I eeked out five on a cold morning without even trying.

The sun’s out in full force, so I open the roof, pull on a ski hat, and turn the heat all the way up. Like I said, the touchscreen is hit or miss, but at this moment, it sends heat blasting through my airy, now-open cockpit. I won’t leave the top down long, but it’s definitely one of those take-your-breath-away vs. number of breaths-you-take moments in the catalog of life. I glance in the mirror and watch the engine’s heat lines waft upwards. The V6 engine note is great for a turbo. In sport mode, it really rips, pulling through the revs with an angry chainsaw sound. Cruising at 55 mph, there’s a deep drone with bass behind your head.

The Artura is sharp but not severe, and it handles well in an engaging but not intimidating manner. I’m low to the ground and fairly comfortable there. The steering is weighty, and the Alcantara grip feels good in spite of the cold. Like the 750S I tested previously, the Artura’s brakes are excellent. Minimal pedal travel, no dive. It’s easy to forget what a real sporting car feels like, and this one is well-tuned.

The Artura’s design is curvy, sweeping up front and subtle in back. It reminds me of the Ferrari 488 GTB but in a cleaner, prettier way. The front fenders arch up gently, and the back is angled yet tapered. It’s how you would sketch an exotic car on a napkin with a few pen strokes. This test car is Namaka blue, which means it doesn’t turn heads like some of the booger green and slimer orange exotics I’ve sampled. It’s kind of nice. For appearances' sake, I like the spider better than the coupe. With the top down, the buttresses in back give the car a sweeping look, sophisticated and even more exotic, yet old school like a barchetta.

It’s an attractive silhouette, and McLaren also gets the details right, though many of them are options. The carbon-fiber vents, the star-shaped 10-spoke wheels with orange calipers peeking out behind, the LED lights—it’s a well-considered appearance. It’s the same inside, where the layout is clean, and there’s good visibility. It’s finished off with orange seatbelts, supportive racing-style seats, and Alcantara that’s pleasing to the eye and the touch.

A hybrid supercar with crazy power that you can use precisely—the thinking person’s supercar? That’s a good space for McLaren to carve out. Ferrari will always be Ferrari, and Lamborghini will always be Lamborghini. When Acura killed the NSX, it opened up a space for something like McLaren and the Artura to slide into.

McLaren won’t beat Corvette on value, and McLaren’s erstwhile partner, Mercedes, apparently isn’t making real supercars at the moment. But there’s daylight in this space, especially for something like the Artura. I enjoyed a few days in this McLaren, even when the weather was more suited to iron-ore hauling on the Great Lakes. Though the seasons can change quickly, my chilly time on the Artura left me with optimism for the future of McLaren.

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