The latest addition to the British supercar maker’s Ultimate Series, the McLaren Elva is an extremely fast two-seater with an open cockpit and a bespoke carbon fiber chassis and body, but without a roof, windshield and side windows.
That’s because the Elva got its inspiration from the car that arguably started the McLaren legend – the mighty McLaren M1A.
To highlight this fact, McLaren Beverly Hills created a series of videos about the Elva, the second of which has just been released.
Delivered
The McLaren Elva is incredibly fast and has no windshield. That then needs a helmet.
The first video in the series saw IndyCar driver JR Hildebrand behind the wheel of an Elva with an optional windshield. “It offers the purest feeling of connection to the road, it stimulates all the senses, from the smell to the taste to the feeling through the steering wheel,” said Hildebrand at the time.
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“It’s the most incredible machine for traveling from A to A, just get out and drive as if nothing else matters.”
The new one, however, highlights the connection between the Elva and its origins.
Kiwi racing drivers Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme both originally left their mark on the racetracks of the 1960s at the wheel of the McLaren cars of the Can-Am sports car racing series.
Driven by thundering Oldsmobile V8s, the McLaren M1A Mk1 became synonymous with McLaren’s success in North American racing, which was also driven by Chris Amon and Graham Hill, among others.
Delivered
The Elva meets its inspiration – the McLaren-Elva M1A.
Designed by Bruce McLaren, the M1A was incredibly light, weighed only 551 kg, had a light but very stiff and strong chassis and was powered by a center-mounted Oldsmobile 4.5 liter V8. The suspension was state of the art in the mid-1960s: completely independent, with unequal length wishbones, anti-roll bar and adjustable coil springs and shock absorbers at the front, and inverted lower wishbones with similar coil springs at the rear.
When the M1A competed in the Canadian Sports Car Grand Prix in September 1964 – the forerunner of the famous Canadian-American (Can-Am) Challenge Cup that McLaren drivers won five years in a row from 1967 to 1971 – it finished third overall, but was the fastest car on the track, setting the lap record four times and breaking it seven times.
Success immediately sparked demand for customer vehicles, but with just seven people at McLaren – all of whom were building team racing cars – the only solution was to outsource production.
Delivered
A suitably orange (more precisely papaya orange) McLaren Elva with a mighty McLaren M8 Can-Am car.
Enter Frank Nichols of Elva Cars Ltd, a small, specialist sports car manufacturer based in Sussex, UK. Nichols proposed building replica versions of the M1A, and in November 1964, McLaren and Elva’s parent company agreed terms to proceed.
The McLaren-Elva M1A was first built and sold before evolving into the McLaren-Elva M1B and then the McLaren-Elva M1C. The cars competed privately, with the McLaren-Elva M1B drawing the attention of American automobile magazine Road & Track, which in July 1966 saw it as “the fastest car we have ever tested (and) an example of the latest thinking “Designated for sports / racing cars.”
The final iteration of the series, the McLaren-Elva M1C, was introduced in 1967 when the McLaren factory team entered a new era with the M6A.
Delivered
The Elva is limited to just 149 copies and is available in various historical paintwork.
That’s obvious from how the Elva got its name, as well as its unique windshield-less look (although there is an optional windshield version available!) As the latest video shows.
Alongside one of the historic Can-Am McLaren’s, the video shows memories of key McLaren personalities, including current F1 CEO Zak Brown, McLaren Indy 500 winner Jonny Rutherford and former McLaren F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya.
The current Elva is powered by a 599 kW 4.0 liter McLaren V8 with twin turbocharging from the same engine family as the Senna and Senna GTR and has the lightest weight of any McLaren road vehicle.
“Everything about McLaren is authenticity, Elva represents that in the purest and most perfect sense, from the driving dynamics to the design to the technology that goes into it,” said Ansar Ali, Managing Director, McLaren Special Operations.
The post Elva celebrates McLaren’s roots in kiwi racing first appeared on monter-une-startup.
