Strip the McLaren Artura back to its specification sheet and the character is already there: 2993 cc M630 twin-turbocharged 120º V6, 585 PS. Mclaren built from 2022, in the decade the industry is turning electric. Rob Melville drew it.
The background
The McLaren Artura is a hybrid electric sports car designed and manufactured by the British car manufacturer McLaren Automotive since 2022. It is the third hybrid by the company since the P1 and Speedtail, and the first with a V6 engine. The name Artura was announced on 23 November 2020. It is a combination of the words art and future. It inaugurates a new carbon fibre chassis called MCLA (McLaren Carbon Lightweight Architecture).
The engineering
Power comes from 2993 cc M630 twin-turbocharged 120º V6; 585 PS is the published figure. It weighs 3302 lb (Coupe) 3439 lb. Work it out per tonne and you get about 177 horsepower — quick by any era's standard, the kind of figure a hot hatch or a sports saloon posts. It shifts through a 8-speed SSG-Seamless Shift Gearbox dual-clutch + E-Reverse gear. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 2640 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the McLaren 570S; assembly was at Woking, Surrey, England, United Kingdom. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Nissan Z, the Cadillac Lyriq, the Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4 — show what else the money bought that year. Its Mclaren stablemates include the McLaren M15 and the McLaren M16.