The 2025 McLaren Artura Spider is a 690 hp, plug-in hybrid-electric supercar with a price tag just north of 300 large. Allow me to explain how it feels to be one with the Artura Spider.
The Artura Spider’s seats are perfectly suited to sporty driving on ideal roads. You won’t be pinched or fatigued by the bolsters. No butt-numbing firmness. No thigh squish. This is a blessing, trust me. I’ve driven my share of supercars, and one thing that can torpedo a great driving experience is a seat that is designed primarily for pulling a lateral G over and over again on a closed course. The Artura Spider’s seats hold you in a way that lets you forget you’re in a seat, and that is important.
The steering wheel is much simpler than in many high-end performance cars. I’d use the word "devoid" here if I wrote for Car and Track. Plainer is great because you don't want to think about the wheel at all. You simply want to make the car move in rhythm with your mind.
The ten and two hands position works best in this car. That’s because you can toggle the powertrain drive mode and suspension modes on the fly, while never moving your hand off the wheel. Your pinky and ring fingers can operate the Sport/Comfort/Track/Electric powertrain controller (right hand) and the accompanying suspension controller (left hand) almost instinctively. There is no better control system in any other vehicle ever built.
There’s no hood visible when you operate the Artura Spider. With the retractable hardtop behind you, you have sky above, scenery to the left and right, and the view forward is just road. No hood, no fenders. The thin A pillars and windshield frame disappear after you’ve been driving a bit. It’s like you are in open air. The design of the Artura Spider is such that you don't get beaten up by wind buffeting. There’s a clear power wind blocker that rises from behind you and prevents that.
Moving the Artura Spider around at walking speeds, the steering is heavy. The engine is a bit jerky due to the dual-clutch, seamless-shift gearbox (DCT-SSG). The brake pedal is further right in the narrow footbox than you’re used to. Your initial impression is that the Artura Spider’s mission may not be low-speed K-turns. And you’d be correct.
What is the mission? Transcendence. The Artura Spider can allow you to enter the flow state. If you’re not familiar with this, perhaps a few analogies will help. It’s that feeling that Updike describes in Rabbit Run when Rabbit takes a jump shot and the ball falls perfectly through the hoop, touching nothing but net. It’s what Brad Marchand feels when he executes a nasty dangle around a D-man and then flips the puck up over the goaltender's blocker, knocking the water bottle off the top of the net. It’s David Crosby harmonizing with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. Tiger Woods snapping off the perfect drive that hooks out of sight to land on the green, rolling to the ideal placement for a birdie putt. Sanford Koufax throwing a curveball that looks like it’s two feet outside the strike zone, but which lands in the very center of the catcher’s mitt for the game-winning strikeout.
How does the Artura Spider deliver this flow state to the operator? Curves. When you drive the Artura Spider above 40 MPH, the steering changes. It feels like it goes away. You don't muscle the car through a turn, you will it through. You look where you want the car to go, and it does it. It’s the mechanical equivalent of Neuralink, and it doesn’t require a chip in the head. You simply flop into a British supercar and go. No special skills are required. I’m just a guy, not Speed Racer. You can experience this flow state. Anyone can.
The steering seems to require no thought or effort. You just will the car along and it follows the ideal line. You can place the car’s front tires anywhere within the lane you wish. Middle. Right. Left. If you wish, you could drive over the lane marker with your right side tires for miles and never deviate from it, all without any apparent steering inputs.
Whoa, chipmunk! It passes safely under the exact center of the car because you wanted the Artura Spider to miss it, so it did. Car backing out of a driveway ahead without looking! The Artura Spider brakes so hard that you feel like the hand of a titan just pulled a string and stopped you. Did you press the brake? You must have.
The coast is clear, and you have a long stretch ahead. The acceleration is so satisfying that it will make you forget battery electric cars. Not linear. That’s BEV’s trick. The Artura Spider pulls strongly at first, and that pull increases in strength as you go faster. It’s so much more satisfying than the diminishing pull of BEVs. There are shifts. They actuate like a choreographer snapping fingers to a metronome. Click, click, click, click. There is almost no physical sensation of the shifts. You hear them, though. It's like the song of angels. The three-liter six-cylinder engine has been mated to a symphonic exhaust. And it's about 18 inches behind the back of your head.
With space to drive, you never want to stop. The Artura Spider keeps on promising that dopamine squirt. You felt in the last corner. You want it again, and again. So you drive on. Eventually, you have to return to reality. Stoplights and intersections are reality. But the Artura Spider offers you a new way to feel satisfied.
The symphony is wonderful while you’re flying along, playing the gears like Clapton does chords. But in a neighborhood now, with that sweet lady walking her dog, you don’t want it. It doesn’t fit. So your right pinky and ring fingers delicately tap the powertrain controller from Sport to e-mode. The Artura Spider is now silent, but still pulls in a satisfying way as you navigate a neighborhood center. This car isn’t only a flow state generator at speed, it’s also a sublime cruiser that glides along with no effort using only electrons.
In cruiser mode, the Artura Spider is splendid. Your left elbow on the door sill and left hand holding the corner of the windshield frame, you are able to move around the low-speed roadways with ease. A great time to listen to the ($5,500) crisp and clean Bowers and Wilkins audio system. Put the glass top up if the sunshine is too much. This takes one touch of the controller and about 10 seconds, and you can operate it while driving at city speeds. The ceiling glass can be clear or frosted, whichever you feel is best at that moment.
Back home, the Artura Spider offers killer good looks. The upward-opening doors are always a treat. Out you come, and over to the frunk to grab your bag. Your thoughts will often return to that flow state. You start plotting routes. Until next time.
Tell us your thoughts on the Artura Spider in the comments below. 
Images by John Goreham.
John Goreham is a long-standing member of the New England Motor Press Association and an expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on LinkedIn and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John's by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ grammar and punctuation software when proofreading and he also uses image generation tools.
