2024 McLaren Artura Spider steps into the spotlight

The covers have come off the new 2024 McLaren Artura Spider – a new convertible supercar that has debuted alongside an enhanced Artura coupe armed with more power, more noise and more safety kit.

The Spider comes as standard with all these enhancements as standard, including newly elevated power outputs of 515kW/720Nm (+15kW), which have been afforded by what McLaren describes as the honing of its force-fed V6 plug-in hybrid powertrain ‘calibration’ – or in simple terms, angrier ECU mapping and a new (louder) exhaust system.

The extra grunt is harnessed by a similarly tweaked eight-speed automatic transmission said to deliver 25 per cent faster shifts, all of which combines for a claimed 0-100km/h acceleration time of three seconds flat, 0-100km/h in 8.4 seconds and a top speed of 330km/h.

That 0-100km/h time matches the Artura coupe and the open-top supercar is only 0.1sec off its fixed-roof sibling in terms of 0-200km/h and 0-300km/h acceleration.

The secret here is the Spider’s modest weight gain of just 62kg over the coupe, all of which can be attributed to a folding roof mechanism given there isn’t any extra chassis or body bracing for the cabrio conversion.

The roof panel itself is a single piece of carbon-composite but an electrochromatic glass panel featuring advanced suspended particle (SPD) technology will be optionally available for those after a bit of extra light or adjustability for their roof-up motoring endeavours.

Should the occupants want to lower or raise the roof, the process takes just 11 seconds and can be done at up to 50km/h.

Naturally, the Spider required a redesign of what would usually be the back of the roofline and engine cover and so it debuts a new aerothermal cooling system designed to direct more air into the engine bay, extract hot air at the same time and reduce buffeting for the occupants.

“The new aerothermal concept features four separate ducting systems and is distinguished from the coupe by the two rear deck inlets situated on the outer sections of the one-piece aluminium hot-formed upper rear bodywork,” said McLaren.

“These contain both cooling inlets for the powertrain and retractable hard top storage area as well an outlet for hot air.

“Between these is the [repositioned] powertrain chimney as well as the inlets and outlets for airflow management.”

The Spider also wears a unique set of buttresses compared to the coupe, which in turn house another intake.

Other changes you can’t see quite so easily include new software for the electric-drive system, which liberates an extra 2km of EV range (now 33km), new engine and transmission mounts, revised damper valving, redesigned brake cooling ducts and the addition of road sign recognition, lane departure warning and Apple CarPlay.

These upgrades and the powertrain enhancements also apply to the 2024 Artura coupe and, in an added bonus, existing Artura owners are being offered a free ECU upgrade so they can also enjoy the car’s new outputs.

“As part of our ongoing improvement plan and the new innovative technologies we were able to introduce, one of the benefits is to be able to surprise and delight our customers,” McLaren PR director Piers Scott told media last week.

“We had the ability to be able to reward our early adopters and loyal customers with this additional power benefit at absolutely no charge.

“It is what we would like to think of as just one of the many benefits of owning a McLaren, so we hope this will land extremely well both with our retail network and with existing customers of the McLaren Artura.”

The Artura Spider’s local ETA and pricing details are still being finalised at the time of writing, but you could safely expect the convertible to cost roughly $40,000 more than the equivalent coupe, which itself is likely to increase in price over its current starting price of $449,500 plus on-road costs.

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