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This is the new McLaren archera.
It sits above the GT and below the 720 s in the McLaren range costing 185,500 pounds.
And although at first glance it has a very familiar look It really is new, no more of that V eight instead a plug in hybrid powertrain with a new v six and an electric motor.
That means outputs of 671 brake horsepower and 531 pounds of torque.
This can drive around on battery power only.
For nearly 20 miles, and up to 80 miles an hour, not 62 miles an hour, three seconds dead north to 124 miles an hour.
Each point three seconds and it will do 205 miles an hour flat out.
Be to expect all that.
It's a supercar.
They're all plenty quick enough.
What you're thinking is well, it's hybrid.
So it's going to be heavy.
But no they've saved weight all over the car starting with the new carbon fiber monocoque which has built up in their new Factory in Sheffield.
Yes, it weighs 82 kilos, which is six kilos more than the one you will find The 570 s but that includes the section for the batteries and like for like it's lighter as well as stronger because now it includes the B pillars and various fixings for hinges on the doors and pickup points elsewhere.
Six kilos have been saved indoors themselves eight kilos have been saved.
With the seats, the engine 50 kilos lighter, that new v six.
The wiring loom itself is a new Ethernet wiring loom which requires less wiring and is 10% lighter.
The end result is the fact that although the whole hybrid architecture adds 140 kilos, 88 kilos of that.
Being in the batteries which is situated low down just behind the seats underneath the fuel tank.
This car weighs just 46 kilos more than a 570s din weight 1498 kilos of dry weight of 1395 kilos for some perspective that didn't wait The basic nine nine to carerra is 1505 kilos.
Pretty impressive.
I think you'll agree.
One of the other ways this has saved weight is by keeping it rear wheel drive, no power to the front wheels like in the Honda NSX or Ferrari SF 90 Now I want to talk about that V6 engine.
But before we leave the front of the car, I think it's worth taking a moment for the overall design because yes, it's more of an evolution than a revolution but there are all sorts of details in it.
It's all at once cleaner because you've got things like if you just Have a look here.
There's no there's no break here.
So you get this amazing sort of stretched taut look across the top of the car with these, these buttresses, which actually feed air in at the bottom of them.
And then you've got details that aren't quite as clean.
So you've got these vents here which actually alleviate the pressure from in the arches, but also then feed the air Down the side of the car, the lights we've got recognizable socket headlights now, which we first saw on 720s we've also got the shape then the graphic I suppose which is, is so well known for McLaren's leaving background to the front you've got a sensor down the front now For adaptive cruise control, and we've also got the sensor in the windscreen you can see up there which recognizes the signs and also, we've got automatic high beam for the first time.
Little things that haven't been available on Mclarens before perhaps not sort of groundbreaking as such, but things that should make this car easier to live with, as well as being fast.
One thing, single wiper, and no no nozzles either.
I love single wipers, there's just something very motorsport about them.
Isn't that the color flux green, which brings us on really to that power tray.
The Arteon uses an axial flux motor, which is small enough to be located within the gear box's bell housing.
It weighs just 15.4 kilos, which is less then half that of the 38 kilo radial flux e-motor in the McLaren P1, and in fact, the only other supercar application of an axial flux motor that we've seen so far Is in the back of Ferrari's SF90 it can put out 94 brake horsepower and 166 pounds foot of torque.
Although that maximum power is transient, dropping to 49 brake horsepower after 15 seconds of full throttle, should be enough.
The new M630 engine is 120 degree all aluminum V6 with a ball bearing turbo sitting in the V, a dry sump, and electric wastegates.
We'll read eight and a half 1000 RPM puts out 577 brake horsepower and 431 pounds of torque.
It's called a hot V for a reason.
And you can see the powertrain chimney that will vent hot air up through the roof.
Rear deck.
The new eight speed dual clutch transmission is 40 millimeters shorter than the old seven speed and there is no reverse gears the motor simply rotates in the opposite direction.
For this reason, the battery is never allowed to fully discharge As well as being charged for the combustion engine while driving the 7.4 kilowatt hour battery can be charged to 80% in two and a half hours via standard Evie se cable and the W LTP.
testing it should achieve over 50 mpg and emit 129 grams per kilometer of co2.
Of course, that fuel economy does rather depend on what mode you're in.
Pirie V mode I've already mentioned comfort mode still shuts off the combustion engine at small throttle openings and below 25 miles an hour.
Sport and track then deploy the motor increasingly aggressively with pure performance in mind, boosting low end response and acceleration with torque infill.
In fact, the archer is throttle response is said to be twice that of Mclaren's non hybrid cars.
So there we are.
That's a few more details about the power train in this car.
One of the big unknowns obviously, is how that V six will sound through these exhaust now, high level up here to clear the diffuser down there.
I love run the back of here, just this super clean, rear deck of the car, all of which actually so this car Got 50 kilos of downforce overall, compared to previous sport series 570 s which was sort of downforce neutral.
Which brings me on to the handling because how is all that power and torque going to be translated onto the road.
What's it going to feel like to drive on road or track?
Well, one of the big things they're talking about is, here is the rear suspension.
So they've gone to a multilink setup.
So you've still got the fixed rear wishbone at the top, but you've got a multilink setup down at the bottom and you've got a particularly aggressive tone link on this.
The reason for this is basically to increase Canvas stiffness and particularly Toe stiffness.
The reason for that?
Well, how I had it described to me is on the road, if you are going down and say those that are width restricted lanes on the motorway or waterbar Auto route and you know you sit in those ranges and it's just particularly wide car, you're sitting there and it's a bit nervous and you're sort of thinking I just want to, it feels like it's wandering around a bit and you're constantly having to work at the steering just to keep it Within that lane, that is generally because you haven't got enough tow stiffness in the rear.
Now on a track how it manifests itself well that I know well, because in a 570 s view going around a track I'm particularly good quick fast track and you coming off throttle as you turn in or if you break To turn in, then you had a really loose fitting rear end, which I happen to really, really like.
But I completely understand that not everybody did.
So what they've done is basically tried to make the rear end of this car much more stable than it was in the previous sport series.
They might think, Well, that sounds a bit dull, but what it's also been able to enable them to do is add grip in other areas.
So we have A shorter wheel base obviously giving greater agility.
So it's 30 millimeters shorter than A720S or the previous sports series.
We've also got wider tires.
So we've got a wider tire at the front.
It's gone up from two to five to two, three, five, and then at the rear we've now got a two nine, five as opposed to two eight, five.
Staring also has that slightly suddenly gotten stiffer and more aggressive more like 600 lT before which you wouldn't have wanted to do obviously with the old 570 s or sports series because if you add in the agility that front and then you've got the luthier Well, it's just a recipe for disaster but an awful lot of fairly overactive.
Oversteer.
The other big thing around the back of the car, which they trumpeting in terms of handling is the E diff.
Now you might remember that McLaren up to now famously really nicely because of I think, Chris Goodwin who was against having a learn slip diff in the cars.
They haven't had a death, Now they have this ETF and what that's given them is well more options really again, it helps give you stability in the car but it should also help you in drift.
So saying this is more drift trouble sort of not just on the way out of corners, but on the way in as well.
So if you think of the the ETF gives you all sorts of options in terms of being able to.
Open it and close it at various points in the corners.
If you go into the corner you'd have it closed.
So you give yourself more stability under braking.
Then you get to the apex, you want to open it right out so you get that sort of ability to just rotate the car at the apex of the corner and then of course you want it locking up.
You sort of pile on the power and drive out to the corner.
Also, when you're sliding the car, the diff, if you've got it sort of working really well, obviously then it should just give you a bit more progression because sometimes McLaren's it worked really well before.
I'm not going to say that sort of suddenly.
Not having a diff didn't work because it did they it worked really well.
With the use of sort of break management, but it should just mean that particularly I think those smaller angles of drift and where it starts, that's where you should notice the difference in this.
So there we are.
That's a bit on the right hand, I suppose, dampers I should really mention those.
This has got the Prior to damper control, so that resolved first on the, McLaren gt.
So that's sort of it doesn't exactly read the road like a camera but it does, react to whatever is underneath it via all the various sensors over the car.
Anyway, I think it's time we went and had a look inside.
While I'm ensconced myself in the cockpit, I should just mention the brakes, which are carbon ceramic discs measuring 390 millimeters at the front and 380 millimeters at the rear.
They're clamped by aluminium calipers from the same Families the system used on the 600 lT and 720 s a bespoke brake booster and electrically driven vacuum pump ensure pedal pressures remain consistent whether the car is running on its internal combustion engine or electric power alone.
The fact there is no region through the brakes should also aid pedal feel.
Anyway, looks like I'm sitting comfortably now.
One thing I probably should have mentioned with regards to the handling is it's really through the steering because it's still hydraulically power assisted steering.
So I'm so glad they have kept that, it has always been one of the highlights of McLarens.
And the other thing they haven't changed really is the steering wheel.
Still not buttons on the steering wheel, still very focused, still A really nice shape and great to hold.
What they have changed in here is, well, pretty much everything to be honest in here has changed, but let's start with what I can see in front of me.
So now if you move this the [UNKNOWN] is attached to the steering column, so it moves with the steering wheel.
So it should always be absolutely perfect in terms of Your sight of the screen in front of you, in fact, one of the sort of side points of that and we've also had to strengthen the steering column to take the extra weight of the vehicle, which then has knock on effects for.
Well, the steering in general because it's a stiffer steering column so you get better feedback through.
Just nice little details like that.
As you can see, we don't have the active panel down here.
We've now got these little Rockers up here.
So we still got power train and handling so you can still split out those two.
If you start the car up it starts off in Evie mode, which is for sort of emissions regs until you put the power train from Evie to comfort or sport or track and then on this side for the Handling which really just changes the damper stiffness from comfort sport to track.
So you can then should be able to pretty much reach those fairly easily sunny without to reach all the way down there and look at Get them which is nice.
I should say this car is pure at the bottom in terms of trim levels.
And then you've got sorta three above them.
One is tech looks like and the other one is this is vision.
So you've got all this sorta.
Yes Green piping on here, gray and contrasting stitching and also these rather nice metal puddles on the back there.
Other things to mention here the visibility has always been another key McLaren component, and that certainly seems to be retaining here.
I've been talking about this over the shoulder.
Visibility out of here.
It does seem pretty good.
It's not quite as good as 720 Yes, but it is nonetheless for a supercar very good back here as well.
A bit more storage behind there.
worth mentioning that in the front, the front as it were is the same size as before.
It's essentially a slightly better shape.
They're saying that it was in 570 s, despite the extra governance for the H HVAC system, which they say they're basically overspent massively so it can run obviously with the engine off because you want to be able to have it running whilst you're in EV mode.
We've got vents along here.
So the sort of diffuse events you don't have all the air coming out of here, the screens See the one up here which goes through various different modes depending on which powertrain mode you are in.
You can also have a reduced or stealth mode in this which just takes away all the, the clutter as it were from the screen so you can really focus when you're driving, particularly on track or perhaps it at night as well.
Screen down here.
Most important thing really is that you can now get Apple CarPlay or Android Auto on it.
So that should answer a lot of usability criticisms that have been there, in the past and other little things as well.
Now, the nosy.
Left is just a button down there.
It's previously on a stock down here, which is always.
I'm sure if you were an owner, probably it was easy enough to find where you got used to it but I always had fun jumping in and out of the car.
It's always a bit of a faff, it didn't seem very, intuitive.
So things like that they've just tried to clean up.
Something else to mention these, seats of big part of the interior.
So it's standard You get these sports seats.
I suppose that you can spec comfort seats but they reckon these are now comfortable enough to spec as standard so they give you the comfort and adjustment of the non fixed back bucket seat.
But also the support and the lightweight properties of a full bucket.
So the way it adjusts is just by a button down here again, that's been designed to be slightly easier and it sort of moves up like that which is quite funny sort of makes sense.
I can see how that that does work in the sort of the arc that it works and there's also more room in here than was in 570 s as well.
Just Subtle a bit more elbow room bit more headroom.
I just it's more spacious for somebody that's as tall as me certainly six foot five other little geeky facts where you've got the light motif that goes around here that when you open the doors up, you can see speakers.
We've got a basil welcome system in here Usually in a supply you have the bass speaker in the door which is not great in terms of stiffness of mounting.
So in this they put them down in the footwell and actually is partially attached to the carbon tub which is great for the sound that it can then produce through that, what else to mention warranties I suppose because McLaren is keen to sort of dispel any thoughts of unreliability, so it's been actually trumpeting the warranties for this car.
So you've got a six year warranty on the battery, five year, overall car warranty and ten year corrosion warranty on this.
Other than that, there's just a lot to take in.
It really is A new McLaren a very new McLaren.
Not perhaps a new beginning because I think it feels like it's building on everything they've done for the last 10 years or so.
And that's the nice thing.
I think that's what I've taken away from this car.
If you look at it, then the looks perhaps No, they're not as totally sort of new and.
Fresh as you might have expected, but you can tell they've listened.
they've kept the things that people like like the hydraulic power steering, no need to change that at all is always been absolutely fabulous.
But they have done all sorts of things where perhaps we were living critical in the past and taking this opportunity To move their cars on, and from what I gather as well, they've taken that opportunity in the in the manufacturing as well.
So the things that they haven't been able to do, because they've essentially been using the same architecture and the same engine, they've been able to change things in terms of the manufacturing process, which are things that you and I will never see or really know about, but should make.
A better car overall.
So, there we are.
The new McLaren Artura.
All that remains, really, is to see how it drives and hear how that V6 sounds.
Let me know what you think about this.
Are you excited about it?
Does it go far enough?
Does it answer questions that you might have had about McLarens in the past?
Are you excited.
To see what it does on a track.
Let us know in the comments below, for now, thank you very much for watching.
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