McLAREN ELVA
Is a screenless supercar the apex of fun or a chocolate teapot? The answer, my friend, is in the Elva
No windscreen or roof... and still£1.4m? Woking’s latest Ultimate Series stretches the ‘less is more’ philosophy to breaking point. Buckle up, it’s going to get windy
One of my earliest prized possessions was a battered and chipped scale model of a McLaren M series Can Am car It was turquoise y green flat as a matchbox with gold wheels and had virtually no screen I’d throw it around homemade imaginary racetracks scrape it past bookcases and launch it into wild slides across our centrally unheated Yorkshire farmhouse’s uneven stone floors in my quest to understand more about this strange looking race car What was it like to drive one of these all conquering cars fling it around corners How did it feel what did it sound like?
Being five at the time made it unlikely I was ever going to find out But the black and white no colour TVs in our village images of the McLarens storming the podiums in the mid Sixties have stayed with me as permanently as the scar on my leg from playing Catch the Pitchfork that summer all those years ago Looking at the classic McLaren M model racers now they still seem impossibly raw
and fabulously dangerous Everything a proper race car should be But driving one? That’s probably never going to happen
Or is it? This is where the new McLaren Elva comes in For speed obsessed nostalgic old gits like me and a couple of the inevitable and permanently priapic influencers the Elva is like being strapped to your favourite love interest and dipped in warm chocolate O cially it’s the fifth car in McLaren’s Ultimate Series follows on from the OG F back in and has the demonic P physics upsetting Senna and stretched Speedtail as siblings But uno cially and importantly for me it’s a modern reinvention of a car that allows one last chance of living and driving the McLaren Can Am dream
At its core the Elva uses most of the greasy and electrical bits from the Senna The engine is the same hairy bhp twin turbo V and the brakes are the same stop the world sintered carbon items just with lightened titanium caliper pistons they save kg per corner The suspension which is bolted to the Senna carbon tub is a retuned version of the sentient and very clever multi mode electro hydraulic system But after that lot the already exotic spec sheet zooms even further into fantasy Elva only territory
With the almost weightless doors open nigh on vertical you step over one of the widest sills in automotive history stand in the footwell and lower yourself into the carbon bucket seats The view ahead is of the oval instrument binnacle with both chassis and engine modes accessed via a tilting toggle on either side of the pod There’s a small vertical screen as per normal McLaren practice for controlling things like the heater and more importantly level drift control Plus a row of buttons under the dash for AAMS and the shockingly small boot release But that’s it
The bodywork is comprised of three huge carbon fibre sculptures you can’t just call them mere body panels which swoop and swell like the Cotswold countryside tightly over the components within But even with all the added curves there’s still more than a passing resemblance to the Can Am cars of old
“THIS IS ONE LAST CHANCE OF DRIVING THE CAN-AM DREAM”
Pointy nose big front wheelarches bulging haunches with vast cooling grilles It’s all there and more The ‘more’ being the integral seat humps which contain ballistic rollover protection instead of roll hoops a rear splitter that looks like a giant’s toast rack and a series of horizontal slits on the bonnet where the deep duct used to be on the race cars
One of these slots contains a key piece of the Elva’s magic Known as the McLaren Active Air Management System AAMS when activated there’s a button to turn it on and o it’s not always on it raises a flap about six inches into the air flowing over the front of the car to reduce the blast on the driver and passenger When activated it pops up at mph and stays up well beyond the national speed limit It’s designed to quell the airflow But you have to think ahead If you suddenly find yourself doing mph and want to reduce the blast you’ll have to slow to mph to make it pop up again but that might be peculiar to this pre production car The claim is that it can be used at any speed
The reason AAMS is there of course is the total absence whatsoever to the total disbelief of every single person who sees it of a screen Owners will be able to spec a short bug shield as per the later M model race cars which many might see as essential not least because it makes the Elva look more racer authentic But while it would make the car more everyday usable speccing the screen deletes the AAMS So I’d still understand anyone wanting the pure look without the screen You’ll be able to spot these people easily they will have a bicep where their neck used to be
Because there is no getting away from it the incessant wind blast in the Elva above mph is nothing short of brutal I’ve ridden motorcycles with no screen deep into three digits that o er less bu eting than you experience here Even hunkered down as far as possible and wearing a helmet it feels like you’ve been glued to the front of a fighter jet In the passenger seat it’s even worse or better depending on your point of view
Braking for a corner after a short but very energetically attacked straight the kg Elva accelerates faster than the Senna I glance through my visor at Jamie the photographer sitting next to me bare headed Looking like a combination of a human smiley emoji and Sonic the Hedgehog he claims that the Elva is the most fun he’s had in a car in years and I agree
But that was a long way from our initial impressions when we first got the keys to the car Despite every piece of common sense shouting at us to wear a helmet at all times in this mph roofless hypercar we launch into the Beverly Hills tra c with no more protection than sunglasses Surely we’d be fine even without AAMS right? Wrong Even at mph the wind blast yanks at our hats and makes our eyes water uncontrollably This is not good
Hitting the AAMS button makes it instantly more comfortable but not the pool of dead calm that we had been led to believe
“IT FEELS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN GLUED TO THE FRONT OF A FIGHTER JET”
“HAS McLAREN JUST MADE THE WORLD’S FASTEST HAIRDRYER?”
Maybe we think if we go a bit faster it’ll smooth out But after a mile run up the freeway at normal speeds hat and glasses clamped to our heads with one hand eyes streaming it was clear Were we missing the point or has McLaren just made the world’s fastest most powerful and most expensive hairdryer?
So slightly bemused we give up turn o swap hats for helmets and head for the canyons And then suddenly everything that has been a chore on the freeway and in town becomes a bonus With a helmet deflecting a huge amount of the bu eting we can concentrate on and explore the car’s incredible poise power and precision I have driven this particular road hundreds of times in more than di erent cars so I know it like the alphabet And the Elva simply destroys it
The steering feel and surety is the best I’ve ever felt yes even on road tyres allowing perfect placement on the road The suspension in Sport mode millimetrically judged feeding back just enough road data to let you know what’s going on smoothing but not smothering detail And the engine is just immense Majestic response power that never ends and rapid gear changes accompanied by the crack of exhaust it just feels like the most polished jewel of a car If I had to compare it with anything it feels like a Lotus Elise’s big brother
But it’s also much more than that With no screen to blunt the wind all of your senses are on high alert You can smell the passing countryside the guy in front vaping Strawberry Surprise the horses the co ee shop the sea You can also feel thermals in the air cooling and warming as you dip and climb up the mountain road It just makes the whole experience completely more engaging and fun It’s nothing bikers haven’t known for years but to get the same sensations in a car that can easily outrun most bikes is a first for me
Which is why the Elva is such a triumph and far from being the weird runt of the Ultimate litter would after a pristine F be my first choice by miles Especially if I could persuade McLaren’s MSO department to paint it a weathered turquoise y green with a few chips in it and find a set of classic gold wheels Fingers crossed I’ve got plenty of roads and tracks I’ve been waiting for decades to drive in a real version of my prized Can Am McLaren