McLaren Artura ending in 2028: what the P34 replacement means

McLaren's first series-production plug-in hybrid supercar has a reported end date. According to Automotive News, whose report was picked up this week by autoevolution and The Supercar Blog, the Artura goes out of production in 2028, roughly six years after the first cars reached owners. Its replacement, a hybrid V6 coupe known internally as P34, is said to debut in 2027.

McLaren hasn't confirmed any of it. Woking rarely comments on product plans before they're ready to show, so treat the dates as reported, not announced. But the direction lines up with everything else the company has signaled this year, and it matters to anyone who owns, shoots, or is shopping for a mid-engine McLaren in Southern California.

What was reported about the McLaren Artura ending

The core of the story, as it stands across the reporting:

• Artura production ends in 2028. The coupe and the Spider both, presumably, since they share a platform and a powertrain.
• P34 arrives in 2027 as a 2028 model year car, a mid-engine hybrid coupe built around a twin-turbo V6.
• More than 800 hp combined. Several outlets put the figure at 810 hp, with torque around 800 lb-ft.
• A price north of $300,000. Reports cite a target in the $313,000 to $315,000 range, with about 1,000 cars planned for the first year.
• It's part of a wider reshuffle under CEO Nick Collins, which reportedly also includes a hybrid V8 SUV around 2028 and a front-engine grand tourer to follow the GTS.

The one detail that doesn't line up yet is where P34 sits. Some reports describe it as the new entry point once the Artura is gone. Others slot it between the Artura and the 750S. At $300,000-plus and 800-plus horsepower, "entry-level" is doing a lot of work either way. Wait for the reveal before drawing a line on the chart.

Why the Artura never quite landed

On paper, the Artura was exactly the car McLaren needed. A 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 paired with an axial-flux electric motor, a new carbon tub (the MCLA architecture), a short electric-only range for leaving the neighborhood quietly, and a combined 671 hp at launch. It was the first time the Sports Series moved to hybrid power, and the first clean-sheet McLaren platform in years.

The launch is what people remember. Deliveries slipped into 2022 after pandemic and semiconductor delays, early cars shipped with software and quality problems, and McLaren paused deliveries for a stretch to sort them out. By the time the car was sorted, the conversation had moved on.

The fixes came. The 2025 update pushed output to 690 hp and 531 lb-ft, the Spider arrived with revised suspension, and the reviews that followed were far kinder. Autoevolution cites 0 to 60 mph in 3.0 seconds and a 205 mph top speed. It is, by most accounts, a genuinely good car now.

The problem is the neighborhood. The Ferrari 296 GTB makes 819 hp from its own hybrid V6. The Lamborghini Temerario makes 907 hp. Buyers at this level read spec sheets like box scores, and the Artura gave up more than 100 horsepower to the car it was most often cross-shopped against. Autoevolution reports 510 US registrations in 2025 and a first-half 2026 delivery decline of 18 percent. Those aren't disaster numbers for a car at this price, but they aren't the numbers of a car McLaren plans around, either.

What the P34 tells us about McLaren's next decade

Read the P34 reporting next to the McLaren 788HS news from July and the shape of the plan comes into focus. The 788HS was billed as the send-off for the 700-series twin-turbo V8: 777 hp, 200 units, a proper farewell. P34, if the reported figures hold, comes in above that car's output with a hybrid V6.

That's the tell. McLaren's future mid-engine cars are hybrid, the V6 is the core engine, and the company intends to win the horsepower argument it lost with the Artura rather than explain its way around it. Pricing the car above $300,000 also moves it out of direct combat with the 296 GTB's sticker and into territory where exclusivity and output carry more weight than value.

A few things we'd watch for when P34 is shown:

1. Whether the Artura's platform carries over. The MCLA tub was expensive to develop. It would be unusual to abandon it after one model cycle, and a carryover would suggest P34 is an evolution rather than a restart.
2. How long the electric-only range is. The Artura's EV mode was short. A car that can cover a real distance silently is a different proposition for owners in neighborhoods with noise-sensitive HOAs, which in coastal San Diego is most of them.
3. Whether McLaren talks about sound. The V6 note has been the quiet complaint in every Artura review. If McLaren leads with acoustic engineering, it heard the feedback.
4. What happens to the name. "Artura" was a new-era name meant to anchor a new era. Dropping it after one generation would say as much as any spec.

What it means for Artura owners in Southern California

Discontinuation news usually does one of two things to a car's reputation. Either the market decides the model was a mistake and values sag, or the car gets reassessed as the last of something and people start paying attention. With the Artura it could go either way, and it will depend on whether P34 makes the Artura look like a first draft or a distinct, lighter, more analog alternative.

What's not in doubt is that the Artura is a remarkable car to photograph. It has one of the cleanest side profiles McLaren has drawn: no big wing, a low cowl, and the dihedral doors that make any static frame. In motion it's better. The surfacing picks up light along the flanks in a way that reads beautifully in a rolling shot at 1/40 or 1/60, with the wheels blurred and the body pin-sharp. On the South Grade up Palomar, which we covered in the Palomar at dawn field guide, the car's low nose and short overhangs sit perfectly in the chase-car frame through the switchbacks. The Woking shape works in the art series too: the McLaren and Lambo pixel stretch is one of more than a hundred archive frames you can license from the store.

If you own one, the next two years are the window to document it as the current car rather than the outgoing one. That isn't sentiment. A set of images made while the car is still in production, on the roads it was built for, carries more weight later than anything shot after the replacement arrives and the whole market is looking at P34. We walked through how those frames are made, from shutter speed to chase-car positioning, in how to shoot a rolling shot.

The bigger picture: hybrid supercars are the baseline now

Step back and the Artura's story reads less as a McLaren problem and more as a timing problem. It arrived as the first hybrid in its class to go head-to-head on price, launched into supply-chain chaos, and then watched Ferrari and Lamborghini show up with more power from the same basic recipe. The pioneers of a segment rarely get to define it.

By 2028, a hybrid mid-engine supercar won't be novel. It will be the entry fee. That's the market P34 is being built for, and it's why McLaren appears ready to spend on a replacement rather than keep refreshing a car with a complicated first chapter.

For Southern California, where the mid-engine McLaren has been a fixture of Coast Highway cruises and canyon runs since the 12C, the practical effect is simple. There will be more Arturas on the road for the next few years, a new McLaren to chase in 2027, and a short stretch where both are current. That overlap is when the best comparison frames get made.

If there's an Artura in your garage, now is a good time to book a shoot.