It’s a known fact the McLaren Artura has had some teething problems but the Chief Executive Officer promised to fix them. Appointed as CEO a year ago, Michael Leiters was brutally honest in an interview last December: "We saw that the car wasn't mature, so we stopped deliveries. We already had a significant delay in our production line at the time and we reduced [production] to zero [cars] a day to fix our quality problems."
Mistakes of the past are still haunting the Artura as Automotive News saw a memo sent by McLaren to dealers in the United States to inform them about deliveries to customers being delayed. On average, buyers must wait an extra four months, with one retailer mentioning cars that were supposed to be delivered in May have been pushed back to September. The insider info was confirmed by company spokesperson Roger Ormisher.
2023 McLaren Artura: First Drive
The cause of the delay is related to "enhanced testing procedures" as the Woking-based supercar marque wants to implement "additional checks and testing in our quality control procedure." Production had to be slowed down to make it happen, and ideally, the Ferrari 296 GTB rival will be problem-free going forward. As a refresher, 164 cars have already been recalled due to a potential fire risk caused by the nuts used by the high-pressure fuel pipe that might come loose with time.
Even before this recall, the Artura had other issues as the electrified supercar’s launch was delayed by software issues and coronavirus pandemic-related supply bottlenecks. Not only that but there was also one test car that caught fire in Spain at the Ascari circuit, according to Chris Harris' column on Collecting Cars from June 2022.
McLaren CEO Michael Leiters has heard from his team that past models have been sold as "non-mature products" that have "risked the financial position of the company." He admitted that the Artura needed "certain technical upgrades" upon his arrival. Quality issues are being sorted out, so customers need to be a bit more patient.
