MCLAREN ARTURA

Finally, sunshine after the rain - but not before some of it got inside our supercar

- ANDREW FRANKEL

Two things have happened to the Artura since last we met: one planned and good, the other neither of the above. 

So we will deal with that first. If you think we've had quite a wet start to the year, you don't live in South Wales. To call the first quarter of this year quite wet is to call the Atacama Desert quite dry. We've been deluged, drenched and drowned relentlessly for months. And through it all, this low-volume, rather exotic, carbon-fibre-shelled supercar has sat out in it.

One morning, nicely aboard and about to set off somewhere, I extended a digit to give the screen a single wipe to clear the thin film of water that lay thereupon, but it had no effect. I tried again, fulfilling the insanity criterion that defines it as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. There was none. 

Briefly I thought something must be wrong with the wiper mechanism so the blade was no longer in contact with the screen.

Only then did I see something that I hadn't previously noticed: the water was on the inside of the screen.