The McLaren Elva Is a Crazy $2 Million Supercar You Can Barely Use

this is a mclaren elva and it's one of the craziest cars on the market today i say that because it has a base price of 1.7 million dollars and for that money you get no windshield and no roof and no windows and absolutely unbelievable performance and today i'm gonna review the elva and show you everything before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era with free listings you can list your car for free and auction it on cars and bids and we've had some fantastic sales recently including this 997 porsche 911 which sold for over 55 000. this fantastic toyota land cruiser heritage which sold for over a hundred thousand dollars and this old-school jeep cherokee which brought 24 000 these older jeeps are getting more and more interest these days if you're looking to buy or sell a cool enthusiast car from the modern era cars and bids is the place to do it with daily auctions and great selection at carsandbids.com so let's talk elva this car is based on the mclaren 720s and it uses the same engine but here it's tuned for over 800 horsepower beating out even the power in the crazy mclaren senna but the big deal for this car is the roof or rather the lack of one no roof no windshield no windows for two million dollars naturally this has been a bit of a tough sell mclaren originally said they were going to make 400 of these but then they couldn't find 400 people who wanted to buy them so they quietly dialed that back to 250 units and then they walked that back to only 150 elvas for the entire world that isn't really surprising but it does make this a tremendously exclusive and special car and it's also tremendously quirky and today i'm going to show you everything first i'll take you on a thorough tour of the elva and show you all of its quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features the mclaren elva with getting inside and that means starting with the key now on the back side of the key you can see it says elva very nice makes sense flip it over and you have three buttons one is like a weird panel that seems to be lifting up in the middle of the car the other two are lock and unlock buttons all three of these buttons are insane what do you really think about it first what is this panel that's the cargo storage area and that image generally shows you where it is more on that in a few minutes stranger though are the lock and unlock buttons because this car has no windows or roof or windshield so why do you need to lock it doesn't make any sense but you can indeed lock it lock the doors and then you can't open them although you could just climb over them this car doesn't have any windows but anyway okay so that's a little weird but so what the whole car is weird next i want to move on to getting inside now there is a button to pop open the door but it is not on the outside as you can see they didn't want to disrupt the beauty of the outside of the car with a door handle or even a door popper so to pop open the door there is this button here just on the inside at the top of the door you can see you push that then the door pops open and then you lift it up and of course it goes upwards like a true crazy super car door should adding some drama to an already incredibly dramatic car now with the door open you can see that the seats are these tight rigid bucket seats which are normally difficult to climb into but they're pretty easy here because this car has no roof so you can really just kind of step right in and it's not really all that bad for getting into a supercar usually it's a lot harder but next up before we go any further let's talk about the whole roofless windowless windshield list situation because you're probably wondering why did they make a vehicle without any windows or roof and you're probably also wondering how can you even drive a car without a windshield how does that possibly work so i'm going to explain that one first this car does a lot of tricks with the air that approaches you while you're driving along using a feature that mclaren calls the mclaren active air management system and here's a rundown of how it works when air comes up to the front of the car like the bumper this front area it goes into this massive panel and then it is sent through a channel in the front of this car through this like big grate in the front which is angled in a way that sends the air over you while you're sitting in the car and that way the frontal air that hits the bumper doesn't get pushed up and into your face and that makes it less necessary to have a windshield so you're probably thinking okay well that takes care of the air that hits the front bumper but what about the air that goes directly over the hood how does mclaren stop that from hitting you in the face while you're driving along mclaren has thought of that another component of the active air management system is a panel that pops up while you're driving the car in order to deflect air from coming over the hood and hitting the driver and passenger in the face and that panel you can see pops up at speeds of around 25 miles an hour it pops up automatically when you reach that speed so air hits the panel and goes over it and goes over the people in the car and that way you're less affected by air coming over the hood and you can see this panel goes down once you get to lower speeds in order to preserve the sleek clean look of the car so it doesn't look stupid when you park it but at higher speeds it does come back up and act as an air deflector to keep air away from smashing you in the face while you're driving the elv now it's worth pointing out that that pop-up panel can be turned off so it doesn't pop up and in fact mclaren recommends if you wear a helmet while you're driving this car which frankly is probably advisable if you do that mclaren says you should turn off that panel because obviously the panel popping up increases drag and so if you want to be as fast and as slippery as possible you'll want to turn off the panel but with no helmet the panel certainly helps and there's still more with the active air management system you see here how the gauge cluster is sort of teardrop shaped and sticking up from the rest of the dashboard that's because mclaren designed it that way so any extra air that hasn't hit the deflector or that front air dam will reach the gauge cluster and then be forced low down through the bottom of the gauge cluster area and hit your chest while you're driving rather than hitting you directly in the face and so that takes care of even more air coming at your face in the car now you're probably wondering does all this stuff actually work and i'll have an answer for you when i drive the car after i show you the quirks and features but at this point you're probably also wondering why not just make this car with a windshield why did they do this the reason for this car is it's intended to be like a throwback to old vintage race cars including vintage mclaren race cars and like the 50s and 60s those didn't have windshields in order to improve their aerodynamics and so mclaren thought it would be kind of cool to make a modern road car that had the same totally unique look but just in case you want the elvo with the windshield you can get it mclaren wasn't going to offer the elva with any windshield option but that just became ridiculous people wanted it and so now a windshield is available and when you get the windshield you can see the hood goes back to normal no flap that pops up to deflect air no grate that directs air over your face the hood is just kind of a standard mclaren hood but in my opinion what's the point of that the whole thing about this car is it's ridiculous no windshield it's absurdly impractical so that's the version you want but unfortunately that hasn't really proven true with customers the impracticality of this car has made it a really tough sell and mclaren originally announced i think they were going to make 500 of these and then they dialed that back to 250 and now they're saying they're only going to make 150 they have not had an easy time trying to get people to buy this car in fact mclaren has taken various pre-production elva models like this one directly to customers and given it to customers for weeks at a time in order to help convince them to buy the car just seems a little desperate not really a surprise since the car is so compromised and obviously the price point doesn't help either this car starts at 1.7 million dollars and there's about a million dollars of available options meaning you're probably not going to buy one of these for less than 2 million with no windshield and by the way one other note on the whole windshield situation some markets actually do require one some u.s states and other markets for regulatory purposes require a windshield and so that's another reason mclaren has added it as an option because it gives them more of a chance to sell a car in more places and potentially pick up more customers and speaking of regulations this car has some rather interesting quirks related to complying with some regulations that would be no problem for a normal car but are kind of a challenge when your car is this one of them is related to seat belts this car is offered with a racing harness as you might expect this car is partially intended for track use but us regulations say you gotta have a three-point belt so this car has both a six-point racing harness and a three-point seat belt in order to comply with regulations and how about the vin in some markets the then the vehicle identification number has to be placed at the base of the windshield but this car doesn't have a windshield so instead it's on this plaque that sort of just looks up at the sky the vin seemingly randomly printed there in such an odd place but they had to do it to comply with regulations even though no windshield but my favorite regulatory weird compliance thing for the elva is undoubtedly the rear-view mirror you can see this rear-view mirror mounted on this little post in the center that is regulatory all vehicles have to have a rear-view mirror even if it's not functional like this one and indeed this isn't functional it's all aluminum mclaren didn't even bother to mount mirror glass on it so you can't even use it as a mirror even if you wanted to it literally does not function but mclaren had to put that on for us market elvas in order to comply with us regulations if you want mirrors in this car of course you have the actual door mirrors mounted on the doors which will be the ones you'll want to use in order to actually see behind you next up a few other interesting items in this vicinity one is this little panel here this little flap mounted in the frontal area that is a servicing flap and if you tap on it it pops open and then you have access to fluid caps you can add fluids in here which is important because the front and rear areas don't open no access to the engine or any other areas in this car but you can still add fluids through this little flap also interesting on the top of the gauge cluster facing sort of forward you can see this little glass piece almost looks like a camera that is the darkness sensor for the automatic headlights in most cars it's mounted in the windshield you never see it this car no windshield they had to find a place for it and that's where it is but anyway next up since i'm on the outside of the elva let's go through some other exterior quirks starting with the little panel that opens behind the seats i mentioned earlier this button on the key fob looks like it controls a compartment behind the seats and indeed it does you hold down the button the compartment pops open and then from there you just lift it up and that gives you access to your storage in the mclaren elva as you can see there is not much storage here only a little compartment that just has enough room for a helmet the driver's helmet just one the passenger will have to bring their own helmet and that is your storage that's all you get in the mclaren elva since the front which would normally be a storage compartment is instead taken up by that whole air management system now also in this compartment you have a few other interesting items worth noting the most important is this that's the fuel filler so you stick your fuel in through here there's no like little fuel door on the outside of the car like basically everything else you also have a couple of caps here for fluids you can see this one for water and then you have another one mounted right here this is for engine oil so you can add fluids here but probably most noticeable back here are these big circles in the center these are engine air cleaners and mclaren made them clear because they're cool not for any functional purpose but they look cool if you can see into them so you can see into them and that is your compartment that opens behind the seats in the elv and next up since i'm back here another interesting quirk of this car is how air gets into the engine one spot where air comes in is very obvious that would be this massive intake located here on what would be the rear fender you got that on both sides for air to come through you also have this little intake back here two of them actually mounted directly above the engine and back which makes sense but the absolute coolest air intake is this one in the door you can see this channel kind of takes air into the door and then it gets to the engine if you open up the door you can actually see the duct where the air comes into the door goes through the door and then goes back into the engine which is a really really cool piece of design that you can see if you look closely and if you get the door open in this car also interesting around back is the exhaust situation the mclaren elva this car has quad exhausts but they don't all sit next to each other or even point the same direction you can see there are two like rear mounted exhausts facing out but then there's two more like upward mounted exhausts near those that point more towards the sky i guess this is done for different tones of exhaust they all function simultaneously but one gives one tone the other gives another to combine for all one fantastic sound and it really is a great sound in this car take a listen to a mclaren elva revving up but anyway beyond the exhaust situation in this car you can also see a massive rear grille filled with all these hexagon holes spanning basically the entire width of the car from one side to another this big grill to help dissipate heat also mounted on this grille you have the badge mclaren but also elva and it should be pointed out elva comes from the french words she goes elva in french is she goes they just condensed it for elva and that's where the name comes from now also back here below the license plate you can see a little camera lens for the backup camera yes this car has to comply with that regulation too your honda civic and also the two million dollar windshieldless mclaren elva but anyway next up let's climb back inside the elvo because there are oh so many quirks and features to cover in here i'm gonna start with the doors the inside of the doors two interesting items worth noting one is a climate vent yes this car has climate control more on that in a little bit but the climate vent on the doors is beautiful brushed aluminum absolutely gorgeous it's fantastic and it's also how you close the door in order to close the door when you're inside the car you reach over to the other side of the climate vent that's your like door handle you pull from there and then it closes kind of a cool integration so you don't have to have like some ugly handles sticking out of the door panel also in the climate vent you can see a little button here that is the button to release the door from the inside you press that the door pops open and then you can open it up the rest of the way interestingly the other button to open the door is also on the inside of the door near the back so these two buttons are only maybe a couple feet away but one is intended for people walking up to the car and one is intended for people sitting inside but anyway next we move further in and in the door jamb you can see a plaque mclaren elva and this one says zero of zero because this is a pre-production car retained by mclaren and not in the actual production run but that plaque reminds you of how special your car is while you're driving it around also in this vicinity you can see this little panel here with like a little leather strap holding it in place if you pull on that strap you can open up the panel and it reveals a storage area but it's full there's a little case mounted in here and if you pull out the case you can see it's mclaren branded open it up and you have glasses in here these are not sunglasses and they're also not prescription glasses they're just glasses that you can put on if you forgot goggles or a helmet you want to drive this car and you want to have something covering your eyes so you don't get hit by bugs or debris or whatever glasses integrated into the mclaren elva and the passenger side has their own panel once again open it up and once again you have a glasses case for glasses that your passenger can wear in case they forgot their helmet but anyway aside from those little storage panels built into the footwells you don't really have a lot of interior storage in this car it probably comes as no surprise you don't have a glove box for example this glove box shaped panel doesn't actually open so the only other interior storage you have is this center console area this lid opens up and reveals a small storage area and a little part of it is shaped to look like a cup holder and so you could maybe put one small cup in there but that's kind of the extent of your interior storage in the elva but anyway since we're here in the center let's talk climate controls which are all integrated into the infotainment system now normally i consider that to be a drawback in cars but in this one there's nowhere else they could have put it there's no room for the climate controls anywhere else so they're in the infotainment screen and the other cool thing about them being here is the control that lets you adjust where the air is coming out is a little person with a racing helmet a race car driver rather than just a generic person like in most cars which i love how mclaren does that but probably your biggest surprise with the climate controls is that this car has climate controls at all because it's completely open to the world so how do you effectively regulate the temperature in this interior to do that mclaren mounted the climate vents lower than they would be in a normal car usually they're up on the dashboard near the top now they're down low so they blow air out mostly on your legs and kind of keep that area of your body warm putting them any higher and yeah it wouldn't be effective climate controls interestingly you do have air conditioning and heat in this car so you can make it cooler or hotter and it'll do something but maybe not as much as it would in a car that you know has a roof but anyway back to the center there's not much more in the middle of this car it's a pretty small space except you do have your gear selector here you can see dnr for drive neutral and reverse of course and you also have your engine start stop button here in the center now if you're wondering about the drive mode controls which are in the center of some mclaren models they have been moved up to the gauge cluster the sides of the gauge cluster have these little switches and you can see you can move them up or down the one on the right is p that stands for performance and you can adjust through various modes and that'll change like your transmission response and your acceleration response the one on the other side is h that stands for handling and that will adjust like your steering and suspension response depending on exactly what you want so that's where your little drive mode dials are in the elva but anyway onto other controls in this interior you have a few basic ones to the left of the steering wheel where you can see simple items like your power locks and your headlights are over here nothing too unusual over on the right side of the steering wheel a few more controls one is for your power mirrors this little dial here you also have a button marked arrow you press that and it'll pop up the spoiler you can kind of adjust where the spoiler sits with that button and you also have a button showing like the elva that's the one that controls whether or not that front deflector flap will pop up so if you press that you can turn it on or off depending on whether you want to reduce your drag or reduce your wind in the face now the remainder of the controls in this car in this interior are integrated into the infotainment system which i showed you briefly before now this screen here in the center it's a touch screen it's arranged vertically like a smartphone and it's angled toward the driver to give the driver easier access when you're going fast so you're not as distracted now this infotainment system doesn't really break new ground and it doesn't have all sorts of crazy tech it basically just has the stuff you'd expect like you can control your radio your stereo whatever you're listening to in here and you have a navigation system so you can add a destination or see where you're going sort of simple stuff like that now on the side of this infotainment screen you have this little dial here and that is your volume dial for the stereo so obviously twist that to turn up or down the volume you can also press that dial in and if you do that it functions as a home button so whatever screen you're on push the dial and you go back to the home screen in the infotainment system it's all fairly simple and easy to use and that's not the only screen in this interior of course as you've probably seen in some other clips there is also a gauge cluster screen mounted directly behind the steering wheel in the driver's line of sight you can see it here and it's pretty straightforward along the top you have your tachometer showing you the engine speed over on the right you have a display showing tire temperature and tire pressure which is obviously useful along the bottom you have your drive modes for performance and handling and the rest of the stuff is about what you'd expect in the gauge cluster like your gear the speed you're going the time all that sort of stuff now it is worth pointing out that the display over on the left of this gauge cluster screen can be adjusted or changed depending on your preference you have this little stock coming off the steering column you can go up or down to change what's displayed in this part of the screen and you can also go into a menu here that allows you to select your backup camera so you can turn it on and see what's behind you or when you shift into reverse the backup camera pops up here in the gauge screen rather than in the center screen like so many other cars but that's the backup camera in the elva and by the way one other interesting stock coming off the steering column on the other side of the one i just showed you there's a second similar stock and amazingly that controls your cruise control this car is impractical and compromised as it is has cruise control and so if you want to take your elf on a long boring road trip you can turn on the cruise control while you drive this stock also controls the axle lifter system if you push the button at the end the axle lifter pops up which is obviously very helpful you don't want to scrape anything this car is very valuable and finally before i go take the elva for a drive i want to talk performance because it is remarkable in this car now this has a twin turbo v8 same engine as other mclaren models four liter twin turbo v8 but here it makes the most power of any of them the 720s has this engine at about 710 horsepower somewhere around there the 765lt has about 750 horsepower the senna has about 790 horsepower this is just over 800 horsepower which makes this the most powerful gasoline engine in a mclaren now the speed tail has more power but that's because it has an electric motor as a backup to assist the gas motor for more overall power but as for a gas powered motor over 800 horses in this car very serious and this is also the lightest mclaren they say this weighs only 2700 pounds which is exceptional in the modern era with all the safety crap you have to put into cars that's even 110 pounds lighter than the mclaren senna which itself was pitched as an ultra lightweight track focus supercar well this is lighter and more powerful over 800 horses in a 2700 pound car i bet it's pretty insane on the road and so those are the quirks and features of the mclaren elva now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the mclaren elva now i prefer to drive windshieldless cars with a helmet on amazingly i've reviewed three windshieldless cars in the last month um and it's also better for the sound of my microphones i'm sure there's still some wind noise but it's better um but i have had this car basically the whole day and i have done it windshield helmet on and held it off and so you're probably first wondering does the air system thing work and the answer is sort of it works like you can feel that more air is hitting your chest instead of your head which is how they design the gauge cluster and you can feel that not as much air is hitting you as you'd expect given that you're going completely open in this car but you're still getting air and that increases as you increase your speed and at a 70 80 miles an hour especially highway speeds you're just getting a lot of air i mean there's not much you can do in a windshieldless car to really avoid that just period now i'm actually a little bit disappointed i've done so many windshieldless cars recently the ferrari monza and the smart crossblade as well because the novelty of it is a little bit dissipated when i drove those two i was like what is this and now i'm sitting this like yeah this is what a windshield this car is like but trying to keep perspective it is pretty crazy you look around here and you just have nothing in front of you i mean you're just in the world completely open to everything and it's kind of an amazing situation in this car uh and it feels incredible now i gotta tell you from a performance perspective this car is really unbelievable mclaren has had trouble selling these cars there's not that many people who want to deal with this you know riding around in a no windshield car that looks this insane with a helmet on you just kind of look like an idiot no matter how beautiful the car is but if you buy it for track use or if you just don't care this thing is amazing to drive for one thing it is raucously fast i mean like insanely crazily crazily crazily fast this car just has an enormous amount of power and really not all that much weight and so it really does feel just really really fast [Music] that's a lot of speed with no windshield the other thing about the car is it changes directions incredibly fast this car is so precise the steering and handling is amazing i have drawn uh driven and reviewed a lot of mclaren 720s derivatives the 765lt and the 720s and the sena and they're all amazing cars and this just continues that basically it is every bit as incredible and amazing as the other mclarens just with more power and less weight and so it feels even incredible which is just really cool but the drawback of course being obvious it's incredibly expensive and you it's just so impractical we haven't even touched on the fact that not only does it not have a roof so you get hit in the face with stuff but you're also dealing with the fact that you can't park it anywhere you know this car is great for san diego where it's always sunny and it never rains but if you live almost anywhere else you're dealing with weather and you're dealing with anxiety whenever you leave it somewhere you have to be inside you have to have a cover on it and that's just not fun it's not practical for most people but if you are not most people this car is insanely cool and i gotta say driving it around i have scarcely driven a car that gets so much attention from so many people people think it is absolutely insane and of course they are correct it is insane because it's so ridiculous i had moms and acura crossovers taking pictures of me uh that's the level we're on here so it attracts an enormous amount of attention but it really is an incredible drive i would say this is one of the very best most impressive driving mclarens uh that i've ever been in amazingly the car is actually pretty civilized at lower speeds um like other mclaren models actually it drives and steers and feels pretty nice and you have this cool fun open air experience which i think is actually kind of neat if you have the perfect day for it but i will say this is certainly not a second car this is a seventh car that you take out on incredibly rare occasions or at the racetrack and my understanding is on a track this car is absolutely incredible because of the lightweight and the massive power if you can control this car which is kind of a challenge you can really have an amazing track experience with it and i love it i think it's really cool i think it's amazing but at this price point and with this impracticality you have to be a very specific person for it but if you are that person this is so cool it's really really neat and so that's the mclaren elva this car is absolutely ridiculous in every respect ridiculous performance ridiculous price just a ridiculous design and idea i'm not at all surprised they've had trouble selling these but it is an absolute thrill to spend the day with what will surely go down as one of the most exclusive and insane modern mclaren models anyway now it's time to give the elva a doug score and the dug score is here 70 out of 100 which places the elva here against some other ultra expensive hyper cars the elva scores fantastically in the weekend categories earning a 49 out of 50 but predictably it loses big in daily categories given just how compromised it is that's no surprise you certainly wouldn't get one of these to drive daily though i will say the ferrari manza sp1 had more equipment higher quality and will likely hold its value better still the elva is an amazing vehicle bordering on a drivable work of art and it's incredible to spend time with one [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 937,904

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Id: 0LIv2FgQFlE

Length: 29min 32sec (1772 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022