McLaren's future starts with Artura hybrid supercar coming this month
McLaren gave us a shadowy look at the upcoming car beforehand, however.
Here comes the future.
The McLaren Artura is coming. What's the Artura? The first part of McLaren's road-going car division's transformation, it promises. On Wednesday, the British carmaker showed off a dark teaser of the upcoming supercar and gave us a save-the-date for its reveal: Feb. 16.
The Artura will usher in an electrified era for McLaren as the supercar packs a hybrid V6 engine. There will almost certainly be some forced induction included with the powertrain, but the company hasn't provided any additional details. However, the shift to hybrids marks a big one for the brand. This introduction also means kissing the McLaren Sports Series goodbye. With the Artura's introduction, McLaren will say "so long" to the 540C, 570S and 600LT range. Don't worry, there are other cars coming, but again, this is part of a pretty big shift for the company.
All of this change pins on a new architecture to complement the brand new hybrid V6 engine. The platform supports anything from an electrified supercar to a pure electric vehicle, McLaren said last year. Perhaps most importantly, the architecture trims a lot of fat from the upcoming supercars' bones. When engineers start adding batteries, there will inevitably be weight increases. Hopefully, the new bones help balance that out.
The Artura shouldn't be a shocking design departure for the company, as past prototype photos showed, with handsome mid-engine proportions and some tweaks to McLaren's road car looks. But, we won't have to make assumptions or guess much longer with a reveal planned in less than a week.
