Yahoo Autos 2021 McLaren Elva Takes It All Off
In the supercar world of lithesome lines and exponential leaps in power, the only way for McLaren to elicit a wow is to build a car so completely outside the carbon-fiber box that it could never be confused with anything else in the current McLaren lineup. The Elva—a play on "elle va," French for "she goes"—is an 804-hp hat tip to McLaren's open-cockpit racers that dominated the Can-Am series through the 1960s and helped establish the brand as a winner.
Although it reminds us of the past, the Elva is a break from McLaren's current design language. The carbon-fiber skin stretches like taffy around a modified tub from the Monocell II family, which underpins the Sport Series cars (570S, 600LT, and 620R). In the interest of weight reduction, the material's thickness measures a mere 0.05 inch at the nose. In fact, the carbon-fiber nose completely lacks panel joints, enfolding the entire front end with a seamless flourish. McLaren claims the minimalist Elva weighs 88 pounds less than the Senna, which itself weighs just a case of beer more than 3000 pounds.
Drop inside, yank the eerily light door down (there's no glass), and a soft-close function seals the last bit. Adjust the steering-wheel position and the entire gauge binnacle moves with it. The 8.0-inch screen cluster is accented with brushed aluminum joints and flanked by dials for suspension settings on the left and powertrain modes on the right.
Judged by the clear feedback through the steering, the lively throttle response, and the hard pedal and grab of the brakes, the Elva experience is like that of any modern McLaren, but the familiarity ends there. The cabin unfolds into the exterior, the curved door panel flooding color into the otherwise unadorned cockpit. The effect makes the whole experience feel like you've been transported into a swoopy Pininfarina concept car from the 1969 Turin Motor Show.
