McLaren Artura review

Not much radical thinking on display in here, but this is a more polished and better finished interior than the Sports Series or GTS. It’s logical to operate, the central portrait touchscreen is responsive, and Apple CarPlay integration is neat. It is wired only, mind you: no wireless CarPlay despite the addition of a wireless phone charger, which seems odd.

This was the first McLaren to use the rocker switches on the instrument binnacle to change modes: once you’re used to that it’s a very intuitive system. The instrument display is crisp, though navigating the sub menu with the stubby push/pull/up/down stalk is a bit fiddly when you want to, say, jump from viewing the battery charge or trip data to skipping through a playlist. Such is life when the wheel is kept gloriously button-free. Course, you could jab at the touchscreen. It’s McLaren’s best infotainment system yet, by a distance.

Is it easy to climb into?

Possibly a bit trickier than other McLarens. You have to move right into the gap between the roof and the upward opening door before dropping down because the doors don’t take a chunk of the roof with them when they’re open, like the 750S. And it’s a long way down. Especially if you stick with the standard Clubsport seats – another signifier that McLaren wants this car to be taken seriously as a driving machine.

By the way, those are absolutely the seats to have if your hips permit. They’re one-piece but tilt, lift and rotate cleverly. Great support and comfort overall. They seem extreme, but they’re not. The £3,300 Comfort seats obviously have much more adjustment, but are sited too high in the cabin.

How’s visibility?

Always a McLaren strong suit, and same here. The back window is actually pretty big and because there’s no wing, you can see what’s going on back there. It helps that the Artura isn’t an excessively large car (4,539mm long by 1,976mm wide). Looking out front the windscreen gives a class-leading view and makes the Artura easy to place and unintimidating in town. And unlike some supercars where the mirrors are basically there just to tick a legal box, the Artura’s give a great view down the side – where you can admire the huge air intakes.

And what about practicality?

No power going to the front wheels means room for a decent 160-litre load bay. It’s pretty generous. And when charging the battery via the engine is so intrinsic to the car’s operation, there’s no need to cart the cable around with you, eating up useful space.

There’s also a parcel shelf behind the seats (although anything put there is at risk of sliding around and will block your view), but more than that cabin stowage has been well considered. There’s a small cupholder, places for your wallet and car keys, and a big door bin that things don’t fall out of when you swing the door up.

The new wireless phone charger works well: and because it holds your device in a reassuring squeeze it will not fall out unless the car is literally upside down. And if that happens… well, you’ve got bigger problems than a scratched phone.