McLaren Artura: Right on track
Driving a modern supercar as intended is impossible in Singapore, but who’s to say you have to stick to driving it here?
NOW that the average supercar is even more powerful than Elon Musk’s mouth, owning one means you have a problem: use it as intended, and you might as well decorate your driving licence with ribbons and hand it to the cops.
Take the McLaren Artura, for example. It’s a contemporary take on the supercar breed, in that it pairs a relatively small but powerful engine with an electric motor for emissions’ sake, but it does so to scintillating effect.
Pin the accelerator for three seconds and you’re well past the national speed limit. Keep your foot flat for a few seconds more, and you might win yourself an extended, somewhat austere staycation in Changi. To think this is the brand’s entry-level sportscar.
On the flipside, who could buy a carbon fibre coupe with 680 horsepower and not give in to the urge for a bit of serious footsie with the right pedal now and then? I don’t know about you, but I would find monkhood easier than pussyfooting in a proper sportscar.
All this means the sneering masses who like to question your need for such a fast car in Singapore have a point. But who’s to say you have to drive your McLaren here, and only here?
People buy exotic cars for all sorts of reasons – such as their massive pulling power (and I don’t mean the pulling power of the engine) – and they have every right, but if you count yourself a genuine driving enthusiast, you could do worse than choose a McLaren.
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There are fewer than 170 on the road here so they’re still properly exclusive (Ferraris are four times as numerous). More to the point, once in a while you’re liable to find them off the road and on the track.
As it turns out, last week I came across 16 McLarens at the Sepang International Circuit, the former home of the Malaysian Grand Prix and essentially a combination of sauna and racetrack.
Their owners were there to stretch their legs (the cars’ legs, not the owners’) for the first time since the pandemic. Each paid McLaren Singapore S$1,888 and up for a three-day, two-night jaunt to Kuala Lumpur that included a day at Sepang to themselves. “The owners haven’t brought their cars to the track for ages,” explained Chong Kah Wei, the managing director of McLaren Singapore.
As luck would have it, the dealership also took three cars of its own to the track, ostensibly so the press could try out some of its latest models: the GT (a grand tourer focused more on comfort than outright speed), the 720S (a Ferrari for people who can’t stand Ferraris) and the Artura.
Conveniently, the event gave some of the customers who took their older McLarens to Sepang a chance to satisfy their curiosity about the current cars, too.
Having to share the session with other pesky journalists meant I had time for no more than a full flying lap in the Artura – not enough to push like mad, but certainly enough for a taste of what it can do. It may be a plug-in hybrid, capable of covering 31 km on pure electric power on a single charge, but it’s at heart a deliriously fast car that demands precision from the driver.
You wield the steering like a scalpel to carve a clean line through the corners, all the while trying to balance things against the engine’s explosive mid-range power and brakes that feel like they could stop anything, even the British pound’s slide to oblivion.
Did I want more? Of course. In trying to find the perfect way around Sepang in a car like the Artura, the centimetres are easy but the millimetres are hard. Finding them provides all the satisfaction.
Working on your skills is one thing, but a track day is also a good way to simply blow off some steam. That’s something McLaren Singapore is well aware of; the dealership is planning at least three such events next year.
“We want customers to feel everything and not just drive in Singapore every day, not being able to experience this,” Chong told me. “That’s the ethos of this whole track thing.”
Even if you think Sepang is too far away to bother, it’s worth pointing out that the track is less than half the distance from Singapore that, say, Paris is from Circuit Paul Ricard, the home of the French Grand Prix.
For customers who don’t fancy the highway slog up there, McLaren Singapore even arranges to have cars arrive at the circuit on the back of a flatbed truck.
While it will sell you cars that are too fast for Singapore, the dealership is at least prepared to give you somewhere to enjoy them properly.
McLaren Artura
Engine 2,993 cc, V6, turbocharged, plug-in hybrid
System power 680 hp at 7,500 rpm
System torque 720 Nm at 2,250 rpm
Power 585 hp at 7,500 rpm
Torque 584 Nm from 2,250 to 7,000 rpm
Electric motor 95 hp, 225 Nm
Gearbox 8-speed automatic
Battery type / Capacity Lithium ion / 7.4 kWh
Charging time / Type 2.5 hours (estimated) / AC 11.4 kW
Electric range 31 km
Top speed 330 km/h (limited)
0-100 km/h 3.0 seconds
Fuel efficiency 5.8 L/100 km
Agent McLaren Singapore
Price S$1,198,888 without COE
Available Now
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