McLaren Will Retrofit Your Artura With an Extra 19 HP for Free
The 2025 Artura gets 690 hp from the factory, but older models can get it too via a free update.
It used to be that a car came with a certain amount of horsepower from the factory and, unless or until you fiddled and added to it in the aftermarket, that was how much hp it would make. Well, it looks like McLaren has taken a page out of the land of software development and is updating all Arturas—not just the new 2025 model—with 19 additional ponies.
When it debuted, the hybrid McLaren Artura made a total of 671 hp from its 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 and electric motor. For next year's model, McLaren has recalibrated the V6's software for a total output of 690. Traditionally, this would be the end of that and there would just be a 19-hp gap between pre-refresh Arturas and post-refresh ones. That's pretty much how cars have always worked. However, McLaren is making the update—which is apparently all software—available for existing Artura owners as well.
Meaning if you're one of the lucky few with an Artura of your own already, McLaren will soon be sending an invite to bring the car to a dealership to receive 19 extra hp, matching power with the new 2025 Artura. The company says the process should take about an hour and, get this, will be done free of charge. That extra hp, by the way, is said to live between 4,000 and 8,500 rpm. Peak torque remains the same as before at 531 lb-ft but McLaren claims optimized delivery thanks to minor changes in electronic mapping.
It should be noted that the 19-hp bump isn't the only engineering change coming with the 2025 Artura. McLaren has revised the transmission for quicker shifts, added 10 miles of electric driving range, added a launch control setting that lets you spin the wheels, reworked the exhaust, replaced the powertrain mounts, improved the adaptive damping, improved brake cooling, and, of course, added a convertible variant. And, as far as we know, McLaren has no plans to give that stuff out to existing owners for free. So, it's not like there's no difference between, say, a 2025 Artura coupe and a 2024.
But between this and Honda announcing last month that it would retrofit last-gen Accords with wireless Apple CarPlay, we may be witnessing a weirdly welcome shift in how manufacturers treat their products after they've been sold.
Got a tip or question for the author about the Artura? You can reach him here: chris.tsui@thedrive.com
