One of my earliest valuable possessions was a battered and demarcated scale model of a McLaren M-Series Can-Am car. It was turquoise-green, flat like a matchbox with gold wheels and had virtually no screen. I toss it around homemade imaginary racetracks, scrape it past the bookshelves and send it in wild slides across our centrally unheated Yorkshire farmhouse’s uneven stone floors in my quest to understand more about this strange race car. What was it like driving one of these all-conquering cars and tossing the turns? How did it feel, how did it sound?
Being five at the time made it unlikely I would ever find out. But the black and white – no color TVs in our town – images of the McLarens storming the podiums in the mid – sixties stayed with me, just as permanently as the scar on my leg from the Catch the Pitchfork that summer all those years ago. If we now look at the classic McLaren M models, it still looks impossibly raw and fabulously dangerous. Everything that has to be a real race car. But do you drive one? This is probably never going to happen.
Or is it? This is where the new McLaren Elva comes in. For 149 speed-obsessed nostalgic old gits like me – and some of the inevitable and permanently priapic influencers – the Elva is as if tied to your favorite love interest and dipped in hot chocolate. Officially, it is the fifth car in McLaren’s Ultimate Series, followed by the OG F1 in 1994 and has the demonic P1, the physically disturbing Senna and Speedtail as siblings. But unofficially and important to me, this is a modern invention of a car that offers one last chance to live and drive the McLaren Can-Am dream.
The core of the Elva uses the most greasy and electric bits from the Senna. The engine is the same hairy 804 hp twin-turbo V8, and the brakes are the same stop-the-world sintered carbon items, only with lightened titanium caliber pistons – they save 1kg per corner. The suspension, bolted to the Senna carbon bath, is a version of the sentimental and very smart, multi-mode, electro-hydraulic system. But after that fate, the already exotic spec sheet zooms further into fantasy-only Elva territory.
With the almost weightless doors that open nearly vertically, you step over one of the widest window sills in car history, stand in the footwell and lower yourself into the carbon bucket seats. The forward view is on the oval instrument tube, with both chassis and engine modes accessible via a tilt knob on either side of the pod. There is a small vertical screen, according to normal McLaren practice, to control things like the heater and, more importantly, the control of 15-level control. Plus a row of buttons below the line for AAMS and the – shockingly small – boot release. But that’s it.
The bodywork consists of three large carbon fiber images – you can not just call it body panels – which, like the Cotswold countryside, swing and swell tightly over the parts. But even with all the curves added, there is still only a resemblance to the Can-Am cars of old. Spit nose, large front wheel strips, bulging squats with expansive cooling grids. It’s all there and more. The ‘lake’ is the integral seat bumps – which contain ballistic roll protection – instead of roll hooks, a rear splitter that looks like a giant’s toaster rack and a series of horizontal slots on the hood where the deep tube used to be. renmotors.
One of these slots contains an important part of the magic of Elva. Known as the McLaren Active Air Management System (AAMS), when activated – there is a button to turn it on and off; it is not always on – it lifts a valve about six inches into the air that flows over the front of the car to reduce the explosion on the driver and passenger. When activated, it is 30 km / h and stays higher than the national speed limit. It is designed to dampen the airflow. But you have to think ahead. If you suddenly want to do 60 km / h and reduce the explosion, you have to slow down to 30 km / h to make it reappear, but it may be peculiar to this pre-production engine. The requirement is that it can be used at any speed.
The reason why AAMS is there, of course, is the total absence whatsoever – to the total disbelief of every person who sees it – from a screen. Owners will be able to detect a short fault screen according to the later M-model race cars, which will most likely be considered essential because it makes the Elva look more authentic. But even though it would make the car more usable daily, the AAMS is removed if you show it on the screen. So I will still understand that someone wants the pure look without the screen. You will be able to spot these people easily: they will have a bicep where their neck was before.
Because there is no getting away, the incessant wind blast in the Elva above 80 km / h is nothing short of cruel. I have already driven three car figures with no screens that offer less buffering than what you experience here. Even being knocked down as far as possible and wearing a helmet, it feels like you are stuck in front of a fighter jet. In the passenger seat, it’s even worse – or better, depending on your point of view.
To brake for a corner after a short but very energetic straight attack – the 1,148kg Elva accelerates faster than the Senna – I look through my sights at Jamie, the photographer sitting bare-chested next to me. If he looks like a combination of a human smiley emoji and Sonic the Hedgehog, he claims the Elva is the nicest he’s had in a car in years, and I agree.
But that was far from our initial impression when we got the car keys. Despite every common sense that calls for us to wear a helmet at all times in this homeless hypercar of 203 km / h – we start in the Beverly Hills traffic without protection as sunglasses. It will go well with us, even without AAMS, right? Wrong. Even at 40 km / h, the wind shoots our hats and leaves our eyes uncontrollably watered. This is not good.
If I had to compare it to something, it feels like a big brother of Lotus Elise
By hitting the AAMS button, it instantly becomes more comfortable, but not the pool of calm we believe. Maybe we think, if we go a little faster, it will get smoother. But after a 20-mile drive on Highway 405 at normal speeds, hat and glasses were clasped to our heads with one hand while eyes streamed, it was clear. Are we missing the point, or has McLaren just made the world’s fastest, most powerful and most expensive hair dryer?
So, slightly bewildered, we give up, switch off, swap hats for helmets and aim for the gorges. And then, suddenly, everything that was a task on the highway and in the city becomes a bonus. With a helmet that deflects a large amount of buffering, we can concentrate on the car’s incredible posture, power and precision. I have ridden this particular road hundreds of times in over 20 different cars, so I know it like the alphabet. And the Elva simply destroys it.
The steering feel and bail is the best I’ve ever felt – yes, even on the tires of the road – which makes perfect space on the road possible. The suspension, in Sport mode, is judged millimetrically and enters just enough road data to let you know what’s going on, smooth but not suffocating details. And the engine is just awesome. Majestic response, power that never ends and rapid gear changes accompanied by the explosion of the exhaust … it feels just like the most beautiful gem of a car. If I had to compare it to anything, it feels like a big brother of Lotus Elise.
But it is also much more than that. You have no screen to make the wind disappear, but all your senses are very ready. You smell the passing countryside, the man in front vaping Strawberry Surprise, the horses, the coffee shop, the sea. You can also feel heat in the air cooling and getting warm as you climb and climb the mountain road. It just makes the whole experience more attractive and enjoyable.
Cyclists have not known this for years, but getting the same sensations in a car that can easily overcome most bikes is a first for me.
That’s why the Elva is such a triumph – and it’s not the weird round of the Ultimate throw, after a pristine F1 it’s my first choice. Especially if I could persuade the MSO division of McLaren to paint it a weathered turquoise green with a few slides in it and find a set of classic gold wheels. Holding thumbs. I have many roads and tracks that I have been waiting for decades to drive in a real version of my valued Can-Am McLaren.
Photos: Jamie Lipman
McLaren Elva specifications
Price: £ 1.43 million
Engine: 4.0 liter TT V8, 804 hp, 590 lb feet
Transmission: 7spd DCT, RWD
Performance: 0–62 mph in 3.0sec est
Fastest speed: 203mph
Weight: 1,148kg