Autocar February 17, 2021

SAME ENGINE, same styling, same-sounding names… However exciting and brilliant each car McLaren makes is in isolation, there has become considerable overlap in the line-up and a lack of distinction between models as the firm has grown. Yes, McLaren Automotive is barely a decade old and growing pains are to be expected. But its ambition has perhaps seen it try to do too much with too little, as the recent GT has revealed. Trying to turn the constituent parts of a supercar into a true Bentleyrivalling luxurious grand tourer proved beyond even the talented designers and engineers at Woking. The all-new Artura (p6) is McLaren’s emphatic response to show that it really can do and be di. erent – and evolve. It brings with it a new engine, new plug-in hybrid technology that…

McLaren has unveiled its first ‘clean sheet’ supercar since the game-changing 12C a decade ago, replacing almost every facet of its V8-engined Sports and Super Series models with an all-new design that provides early clues about how it will deal with the age of electrification. The car, called the Artura and available to order now from £185,500, is a plugin hybrid with a governed 205mph top speed and 3.0sec 0-60mph acceleration. In addition to the explosive performance, it can cruise for up to 19 miles on battery power alone and its combined fuel economy exceeds 50mpg. At the kerb, the Artura weighs just 27kg more than a 720S even though its 671bhp powertrain consists of a newly designed twin-turbo V6 engine, a 92bhp electric motor and a 7.4kWh battery, all mated to…

Porsche’s celebrated track-bred GT3 line has moved into a new generation with the long-awaited unveiling of the 992-series 911 GT3. The new model, on sale now priced from £123,100, is described by the firm as “a highly athletic road car fit for high-performance driving on track balanced with the demands of everyday use”. As with previous GT3 models, Porsche Motorsport has been heavily involved in the new car’s development, this time in a bid to transfer “pure racing technology into a production model more consistently than ever before”. The 4.0-litre engine is capable of revving to a dizzying 9000rpm To that end, the new GT3 features the traditionally high-revving naturally aspirated flat six in 4.0-litre form, with more power than ever. It also gets key aerodynamic and technological upgrades, the sum total of which…

The radical E-R9 concept is Lotus’s vision of what endurance racing cars could look like in 2030. Styled by Evija hypercar designer Russell Carr, it features an aircraft-inspired cockpit in a sweeping deltawing body and would be “partly driven like a car and partly flown like a fighter jet”. The E-R9 (E-R for ‘endurance racer’ and 9 in tribute to the British brand’s first Le Mans racer) is the work of the Lotus Engineering consultancy arm and showcases features and tech that could appear on future competition cars. It’s a virtual design study for now, but chief aerodynamicist Richard Hill said the concept “incorporates technologies which we fully expect to develop and be practical”. The E-R9’s aerodynamic efficiency is optimised by the use of ‘morphing’ body panels that expand on the concept of active…

When the UK government revealed in November that it would bring forward its ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2030, a starting gun was fired to signal to the car and electric vehicle charging industries that the race is on. Both must deliver suitable infrastructure to support a mass adoption of EVs in the next decade. One major problem the current public charging network faces is an absence of chargers away from congested areas of the country. According to data supplied by Zap-Map, 40% of the public charging network is located in London and the south-east, compared with just 3.7% in Wales. A Welsh government spokesman acknowledged the disparity, telling Autocar: “There are specific challenges in remote and rural areas, where there’s a particular need for collaborative…

IF YOU’RE A tyre designer these days, you could be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Why? Because of EVs – more specifically, high-performance EVs. Tyres are a melting pot of compromise, trading off between grip, ride quality, wet handling, dry handling and rolling resistance. Over the past decade, the significance of rolling resistance has been steadily increasing in line with the need to find that last percentage point of efficiency to reduce CO2 emissions. Suspension and tyres are closely matched during the development of a car and certain tyres are recommended for used on a particular model for that reason. An example is the Pirelli P Zero Elect, developed in conjunction with car manufacturers as a dedicated EV tyre. One of the trickiest fitments was the Porsche Taycan, simply…