The New Artura is Proof McLaren Always Gets it Right the Second Time - TheSmokingTIre

Hello everybody and welcome to a hot day up on the mountain. So hot actually that we're keeping the top of the McLaren Artura Spider closed. Artura, look, everyone knows there's been some problems. Right, they had a four-month delay after the initial delay. The four-month delay was like a quality control issue they wanted to refine a little bit. They bought some cars back and now we're into the second gen car in 2025 model year, which this is. The Spider coincides with the second generation Artura. There's a power update. It's now up to 690 horsepower. They've refined a bunch of mounts and suspension bits. Frankly, things I didn't think were wrong with the original Artura. They changed so much with this car and it's like the engineers that work on powertrain suspension, they don't want to take a vacation or something. They just keep they keep fiddling with stuff. Well, they had to fix it. Well, the glass half empty is they weren't done with the car when they rolled the coupe out. Right. And they still had these things in the oven. Items outstanding. The glass half full is they wanted to keep iterating. Right. I mean both can be true, but the fact is you're now more likely to see the second gen Artura on the road, possibly before you've even seen a first gen Artura on the road. However, dynamically, I drove the first gen Artura and I thought it was excellent. The V6 is smooth and powerful. The hybrid system works really well. You've got a 7.4 kilowatt hour battery with an axial flux motor in the gearbox that also acts as a reverse gear. There's no mechanical. Although now the electric range is up by two miles. It's 21, not 19 with the first one, which is a big, big change. Hugely important. And you've got the electrochromic power top, which does go down in 11 seconds. This is very important because it blocks like 99% of well, UV light, not light, but I'm very grateful for that today. Right. So the Artura replaces the sports series cars, the five series and six series cars. And it's not cheap. 273 grand base for the spider. And this one is hold onto your balls. $386,000. There's $115,000 in options on it, including 37,000 in exterior carbon fiber, 9,000 in interior carbon fiber. The $8,300 driving assistance pack, the $9,000 electrochromic roof, the $9,400 performance pack. And, uh, and then a bunch of other things that are less than the high four things. Yeah. They're small. 5,000, 5,000, 5,000, 5,000, 5,000. What's that among friends? Yeah. What is it? What is a small number? And, uh, we're going to have a go right now after you give me 90 seconds for today's sponsor. Guys filming cars up on the mountain is super fun, but also in the California summer, it's super hot, super sticky, and super sweaty. And when we come down off the Hill, I got to have the whole rest of a work day after me. I don't have time to go home and shower. 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And you've got to think of it as sort of like a pre deodorant to stop odors before they start. Yeah. Masks odors for up to 72 hours. Mando's clinically proven to control odor better than with a shower and soap alone. Remember the starter kit comes with the stick, the cream, the body wash and the deodorant wipes, and you can get them all at a special discount. Hit the link in the video description and use our special code for five bucks off a starter kit plus free shipping. That's a 40% off net value. And thank you to Mando for sponsoring today's video. Now let's get back in this thing and hit the road. All right. Are we smelling good? It's not a lot better. We smell good. Thank you. Let's take off in electric mode, which is why everybody has come to this video to see how it is in electric mode. The turning radius. Everyone wants to know what this hyper car EV is like. Actually pretty good. So you can go highway speeds in electric mode. Yeah. It's in the gearbox and this car is quite light. It's actually 3,400 pounds of change at the curb. Lightest car in its class. It's very impressive. It's lighter than a Ferrari 296 GTB coupe by a couple of hundred pounds. Even with fluids, because you've got to find, like some people report dry weight and some do this, but even with all the fluids, it's a couple of hundred pounds lighter, which is impressive. It's also, I mean, I'm not even trying to be silly. The EV efficiency is pretty good. This battery pack is about half the size of the one in a Prius Prime, and it goes about half the distance. So it's a very light car. As you said before, the benefit of the carbon tub, right? You save a lot of weight. Ferrari keeps using, they will use a chassis for so long. They will cook the cow, like the steak, and it'll cook the bones, and then they'll cook the head. So will McLaren, but the chassis they're starting with is made of carbon. It's a carbon fiber scale. We're going to go straight to my favorite mode, track powertrain comfort chassis. They've moved the adjusters up on the binnacle here. You can hit them with your fingers, and now we can go. This is a true delight to drive. It's fluid. It's fast. Steering is great. The ride is so good. Ceramic brakes, standard on the Artura, as it should be for a car of this price point. Yeah, and it's performance. And I love the Ferrari 296. That's the closest competitor. It drives great. I love using the Artura better. The UI is much easier. Everything is simpler. If I actually wanted to use a supercar as a daily driver, the 296 would drive me insane. This is logical and simple and easy, and even though the steering wheel is completely devoid of any buttons, I can operate everything from my peripheral vision down here, and I like that system better. Yeah, definitely, and I like having those little buttons on the binnacle, because they're pretty much hidden from your view when you're driving. Right. They're not intrusive. They don't look like, oh, this is ugly. It's cluttering the dashboard, but they're really easy to use, and then, of course, having a good reactive touchscreen. This is a much improved one over their earlier cars. Yeah, and yes, it has CarPlay. We're not even talking about that right now. You need to be wired in. It's not wireless. Have I said this is stupid fast? It is such a smooth experience, because everything's so locked down together with all these new engine mounts and things that I don't realize how fast we're going until I look over at the numbers. Yeah, the gearbox is really, really smooth, even in track mode. Smoother, I think, than the 7 Series car. It's torque-filled. Right, it has torque-filled, but it also has this green fluid thing that pressurizes the lines before you shift, so the shifts in this are 25% quicker than they were in the Arturia you drove before, which is a really impressive improvement. Fixing something that I didn't find to be a problem. Right. Well, speaking of that, it has new engine mounts, which they're very proud of. Yep. Which is a problem. Was that a problem? No. It's a little tighter and firmer? Yeah, I was awed by that. You see, it helps everything move more as one unit, but I've never been in a McLaren and thought, you know, that engine mount, it feels too soft. I guess I don't have the palate, and the engineers do. No, this car, it's hard for me to say specifically, well, compared to the first-gen car, because A, it was like a year and a half ago, and I've driven 150 cars since then, and B, the things that they claim to have fixed, again, I didn't have a problem with. But, with what we have in our hands right now, we've got a car that rides beautifully, it feels incredibly tight and composed, it's crazy smooth, it's super fast, it's well-insulated in here, that, like all McLarens, the Spyder is just better. Yeah. With a carbon tub, you don't lose rigidity. It's a 136-pound weight penalty, which, if you ask me, is well worth it to be able to drive this car over the top. Totally agree, and whenever I've been in one of these cars, a McLaren Spyder, the tops go down, up and down quickly. 11 seconds. Well, that's really proper fast. You can use it up to, like, 30 miles per hour. Yeah. It's just, it's fast enough you could do it at a stop sign, and you wouldn't get yelled at that much in California. And if you keep it over 70, you can drive the top down in the rain. At over 70 miles per hour. Oh, great, you did that, yeah, you did that, while the water's running. And, by the way, when we started driving, when I put it into track mode, we were at 40% battery power. We're now at 58% battery power, about six minutes later. So, in track mode, if you're not using full throttle all the time, it will positively charge the battery, which is fantastic. These are good seats. It's a great, see, it's one of the clever seats in a supercar I've experienced when I got in the car today, because one, it's manual slider, and it's a fixed back, but when you hit this button, it sort of rotates itself, like on a slide, so you actually can lean it back a bit, and then the bottom cushion dishes up, which just holds you in really nicely. And it also has a lumbar support, and I don't know of any other one-piece bucket seat with a power-adjustable lumbar support. I think they've heard our many, many, many, many complaints. Yeah, it's very good. You know, I'm about to do a thousand miles in this car. I'm sorry that we have to make this video before that, but it's a timing thing, because I'm going to Pebble Beach, and this is my car, so I'm going to do a thousand miles in this thing, and we'll have a lot more to talk about the Arturo Spyder on the podcast after that trip. The thing hauls butt, obviously. It feels even faster for the passenger seat. Yeah, because you don't know what's about to happen. But it's on PZero Corsas, which are a good tire for if it rains and everything like that. I hope it rains. I want to try this car in the wet. The 720 was so good in the rain. Well, it's that British car thing, right? Yeah. What I love is that they kept the old-school steering, sort of. I mean, it's hydraulic with electric assist, so an electric motor powers the hydraulic motor. That's why the feel is, in my opinion, the best they've basically had on sale today. But then you have the super-fast transmission. It feels like, I don't know, I wonder if it's bordering on too fast, too smooth. You get a nice little lick on the paddle. I don't think it's too fast or too slow. I think it's so agile, and it's just so reactive. So I would have to drive it back-to-back with one of the earlier cars to notice if the suspension changes, because they sped up the processing power, and they have those new engine mounts. I don't know if that has really changed the feel. Right, but the 7 Series cars still have that magic suspension, right? But this has the 400-volt system, so it can respond really fast. Yeah. Two different approaches. Right, and it has mechanical sway bars, too. Yes. But they changed the shock valve in a little bit, and they also sped up the processing power by 90%. So it tries to read the road and tell the future, basically, a little bit faster. Similar to what Porsche did in the 911 Hybrid. Same kind of vibe. It is. It's so fast, man. It's so easy to go so fast. Wow. Wow. And they've got that very firm brake pedal up there, but it's aggressive. I like it. You need to have a strong left foot, or right foot if you brake with your right foot, but you at least have a progressive resistance that tells me I'm binding them more and more. Jethro's right. Every McLaren is 800 horsepower. They're old. Yeah. They raised this by 20, which is funny. It's all from a tune. You could bring your first-gen Artura back there, and it's like, sorry about that. Yeah, they'll free upgrade the first-gen cars. Yeah. I also love the visibility of this car. The really low cowl, the windows are a little bigger than in the 7 Series car, or the earlier 5 Series cars, and the clear buttresses in the back so you don't have a blind spot. They do a really good job of making it so you could see it. Yeah. And I love that. As good as you do. Oh, chipmunking lift. It's okay. It is, as ever, a pure joy to drive one of their cars. Is McLaren the new Lotus? They're building lightweight, very focused cars connected to Formula 1. They build no SUVs or crossovers. They don't make money. Their cars are notoriously unreliable. They go bankrupt every couple of years or they come close. Yeah. That is a great- I think McLaren might be the new Lotus. Yeah, it's just the problem, the difference is, of course, that the price point is three to four times what Lotus is. Sure. Lotus was the affordable, amazing sports car, and they've been pulled or gone away from that because the market's gone away from that. Sure. But yes, this has a lot of the same ethos, of course. Yeah, philosophically speaking. And also, this is half- I mean, even though it's insanely expensive, it's half to 60% of the price of a 296, which is its closest competitor. Now, it has an e-ray in options, so there's that. That's true. We'll take you down, and let's just put the top down real quick and count it off. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Their estimate is correct. What do you think America's Accessories Pack is? A fire extinguisher and a bottle of whiskey. All right, that's $2,200. Wow. America's- America's Accessories Pack is what it's- Well, this car does have- it's got a portable charge cable in the front, it's got a fire extinguisher, and it's got a first aid kit. You think it's that? Probably. That's good stuff to have. The seats, Club Sport with lumbar adjustment, are $1,200. That is 100% of the money. This is a fantastic seat in a supercar for a fixed bucket. Yeah. I gotta say, like, I mean, with the understanding that there have been some reliability issues with this car, dynamically, I love it. Yes. Living with it in LA, running around, I love it. It's got enough trunk, it's got enough space, it's got enough usability, it's comfortable. I'm so excited to do 1,000 miles in this car. It's gonna be so great. They're just good. Yeah. I mean, I've been a huge McLaren fan for a while. Every time they make one, it's exciting, fun, and the usability just gets better and better, I would say. And it's light enough at 3,400 pounds, where I don't care that it's a hybrid. It's not like it- being a hybrid, it doesn't get in the way of its dynamics. It does not feel heavy. I mean, maybe it's the suspension and the tuning and everything, but it feels like a much lighter car, and it does feel like a smaller car as we're zigzagging through these tighter corners. One of the only negatives, of course, is the sound. 3-liter V6, it's fine. It's pleasant. Yeah, it's pleasant. It's just, it's like a tight- oh, that was gonna sound very weird. It's fine for a V6. It sounds precise. It sounds finely engineered. Doesn't sound as good as 296. Whatever they've done does truly sound better than this. It sounds closer to the V12. This sounds good, sounds better outside the car than it does inside the car. On the drive-bys, it sounds good. All right, I'll drive behind you. Inside the car, you're not getting that much. Right. But it does sound good in the drive-bys. And so, yeah, I'm going to Pebble Beach with this, but I'll have gone and returned by the time you see this video. Thank you to McLaren for lending me this car for a 1,000-mile road trip and letting Zach have a go as well for this video. We'll have a lot more to say about the Artura Spyder post-Pebble Beach on the Smoking Tire podcast. Make sure you check that out, and we'll see you later. And remember, always fight your tickets on the Off the Record app available in the Android and iOS store, or go to offtherecord.com.