Exclusive: Carsales meets the McLaren Elva

A word of advice: when you're only one of a handful of hacks invited to the world premiere of a million-dollar hypercar, walking straight past it when you arrive at the car-maker's HQ will upset the gathered engineers and designers that created it.

In my defence, the McLaren Technical Centre (MTC) in the UK is, and always has been, a distracting place to visit – especially when it's 'littered' with hypercars, like it is today.

From the original McLaren F1 and first P1 to the track-suited Senna, there's a whole host of legendary racers, all here to pay tribute to the arrival of the fifth and latest member of McLaren's Ultimate Series.

When I finally crane my neck from a sublime canary-yellow F1 LM to first catch my glimpse of the stunning new McLaren Elva, it begins to twig what a big deal this car is for the Woking-based supercar maker.

In the metal, the Elva is not only wild but drop-dead gorgeous – easily the best-looking car in McLaren's history.

Sitting impossibly low, the open-cockpit speedster conjures images of 1960s sports cars like the iconic Porsche 550 – its looks are pure concept car and, to be honest, it's difficult to fathom how it can be road-legal.

But it is, and the mid-engined, rear-wheel drive supercar’s superpower seems to be turning grown men into giggling school kids.

Borrowing its elderly-sounding 'Elva' name, which means “she goes” in French, from the lightweight open-top M1A race cars developed by Bruce McLaren, the screen-less Macca even has heritage, sort of.

The modern McLaren Elva is as far away from a race car as possible – despite pumping out 600kW from its twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 and weighing less than a Senna – because it was created for pure fun and not fast laps.

That said, McLaren says it will hit 100km/h in less than three seconds and reach out to 200km/h quicker than the Senna, in just 6.7 seconds.

And it’s not that the McLaren Elva would be useless on circuit, but it may be humbled at a racetrack by much less expensive machinery. For the millionaire exhibitionists who are expected to buy it, without the downforce generated by the Senna’s big wings, a jaunt around the Nurburgring would result in an impromptu drift session.

As we pour over the details, McLaren's chief designer and friend of carsales, Rob Melville, joins us for a chat.

“First time I went in it, not even as a driver but as a passenger... Well, I have not laughed as much in a long time. I was literally grinning from ear-to-ear.

“It was incredible. You could feel the wind in your face but as you picked up speed, the breeze doesn't get any stronger. In fact, it actually dies off,” claims Melville.

He was referring to the Elva's main party trick, an advanced aero package that creates a shield of air through a gurney flap to reduce buffeting at speed.

Melville claims that based on the testing he did, a normal conversation is even possible at speeds of up to 70mph (112km/h) and that he personally wouldn't reach for the on-board crash helmets (stored under the rear tonneau) until the Elva has passed 100mph (160km/h).

Obviously, Melville couldn't recommend those speeds on the Hume, even for scientific purposes – and a chance encounter with some of the local wildlife doesn't bear thinking about – but that's OK, because this isn't a car you'll ever take on a road trip.

“The Elva is an A-to-A kind of car – something you just take out for a drive, purely to have some fun.”

And that explains the lack of a front screen, or even an emergency roof when there's a downpour. There's a plastic cover for when it's parked that’s affectionately called the "shower cap" by the designers, but this is a car created for when all the ingredients are right for a perfect drive.

That why it's a speedster. Both the engineers and designers wanted the driver to create a greater sense of connection between the driver and the road.

Also playing a part here is the bespoke carbon-fibre chassis and body, unique carbon-fibre seats and sintered carbon-ceramic brakes, all of which help make Elva the lightest road car ever from McLaren.

Despite sharing a different brief to the last Ultimate Series model, the Senna, Melville said McLaren attacked the design and engineering process in the same way.

Instead of the design and engineering teams working in isolation, they sat down together – in the same way as they did with the Senna – and figured out how to make it as beautiful as possible without sacrificing its hypercar credentials, instead of simply maximising speed and minimising lap times.

“A clear example is in the side intakes. We'd done a tremendous amount of research with the Senna,” says Melville, pointing towards the gaping crevice on a nearby car.

“We proved on that car, for ultimate performance air should enter a huge vent that's ideally sat behind the doors. But that approach wouldn't work with the Elva – you would destroy the surfacing we needed for this effect.”

That meant both engineers and designers had to improvise, replacing a large and ugly opening with not one but three individual inlets – one of which now channels cool air through directly though the dihedral doors. A second one is on the bottom of the door while the third is a traditional 'aesthetically optimised' rear fender vent.

Along with active aerodynamics, the McLaren Elva features state-of-the-art linked-hydraulic active suspension and electro-hydraulic steering that’s claimed to deliver the “purest feedback”.

Then there's the sound the Elva's V8 makes.

“We call it the Nirvana exhaust because, basically, we think nothing sounds better. Again, instead of simply packaging the rear pipes, we asked designers to tell us how we could make the greatest-sounding car ever.”

The result is a low back-pressure Inconel and titanium quad-exit exaust system that borrows the knowhow from the 600LT's top pipes, which help muster the piercing high frequency sound.

McLaren then added a second pair of exhausts spaced wide apart, to bounce lower frequency sound waves off the road for a deep, bassy tune.

The learning extracted from the McLaren Elva just kept on coming: from the laser-cut rear vent that's combined with a tumble effect to extract hot air from the engine, to that 'air screen' that was actually found to produce useful downforce at high speed.

The cossetting air bubble resulted in the performance of the sound and climate control systems far exceeding original expectations. With its air-vents set lower in the cabin, the Elva should easily be a match for a hot Australian summer's day.

In the end the McLaren Elva proved so influential that Melville says many of its design elements will reappear on future McLaren models. And the engineering knowledge accrued might even make the Senna’s replacement as fast around a track as it is beautiful.

Just 399 examples of the McLaren Elva will be available, each priced at £1,425,000 ($A2.78m plus local taxes) depending the level of personalisation by McLaren Special Operations (MSO).

Melville says the Elva is 98 per cent complete ahead of first customer deliveries beginning in 2021, although the pyrotechnic rollover hoops still need to be tested that could prompt the odd tweak or here.

Legislation also demands that a version is developed with a full, fixed windscreen in place, which one engineer described as heartbreaking, but Melville isn't fazed. He's just content he's managed to get away with creating a genuine bit of automotive sculpture.

“This has been a dream project. You have to go back to the mid-1960s to find a car with anywhere near as much drama as this.”