Titanium calipers; 390 mm-class rotors shared with the Senna, the titanium calipers saving ~1 kg over the Senna's
The McLaren Elva is the fifth car in McLaren's flagship Ultimate Series, after the F1, P1, Senna and Speedtail, and the most extreme open two-seat speedster McLaren has built. As launched it has no roof, no side windows and no windshield: driver and passenger sit in the open air, shielded instead by an Active Air Management System (AAMS) that lifts a carbon-fiber deflector into the airstream to route airflow up and over the cockpit. It is built around a MonoCage III carbon-fiber monocoque with a full carbon body. Power comes from the M840TR, a dry-sumped 4.0-liter twin-turbo flat-plane V8 making 804 hp (815 PS), which made it McLaren's most powerful road-car V8 at launch, above even the Senna. At 2,531 lb (1,148 kg) dry it is also the lightest road car McLaren has built. The name revives the Bruce McLaren "McLaren-Elva" M1A sports-racers of the mid-1960s ("Elva" from the French elle va, "she goes").
It is also one of the rarest modern McLarens. The planned run was cut twice, from 399 at the November 2019 reveal to 249 in April 2020, then to "no more than 149" in September 2020. That leaves it second only to the 106-unit Speedtail among the contemporary Ultimate Series. In May 2021 McLaren added an optional fixed windshield (a heated glass screen with wipers and visors, deleting the AAMS and adding ~44 lb (~20 kg)), partly to ease registration in markets where a screenless car is hard to homologate. Both versions count within the 149. Launch pricing was quoted from roughly $1,690,000 before options.
It depends on the car. The Elva launched purely as a windshield-DELETE car, using the Active Air Management System (AAMS), a deployable carbon deflector, to route airflow up and over the open cockpit in place of a screen. In May 2021 McLaren added an optional fixed windshield: a heated glass screen with rain-sensing wipers, washer jets and sun visors, partly to satisfy registration rules where a screenless car is hard to homologate. On the windshield car the AAMS is deleted, and the screen and its hardware add about 44 lb (~20 kg). Both versions count within the 149.
No. McLaren never published an official top speed for the Elva. Independent road tests and spec databases put it around 203 mph (326 km/h), but treat that as an unofficial figure rather than a McLaren number. The Elva's brief was the open-air experience and minimum weight, not a headline top-speed claim.
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