Strip the McLaren Elva back to its specification sheet and the character is already there: 4.0 L M840TR twin-turbocharged V8, 815 PS. Mclaren built from 2020, in the decade the industry is turning electric. Rob Melville drew it.
The background
The McLaren Elva is a limited-production mid-engine sports car manufactured by McLaren Automotive. The car is the fifth in the McLaren Ultimate Series, after the F1, the P1, Senna, and the Speedtail. The open-top sports car is inspired by the open top race cars developed by Bruce McLaren in the 1960s.
The engineering
Power comes from 4.0 L M840TR twin-turbocharged V8; 815 PS is the published figure. It weighs 2798 lbs. Work it out per tonne and you get about 291 horsepower — genuine supercar pace. It shifts through a 7-speed dual-clutch. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Woking, Surrey, England, United Kingdom. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Lamborghini Lambo V12 Vision Gran Turismo, the Maserati MC20, the Aston Martin DBX — show what else the money bought that year. Its Mclaren stablemates include the McLaren M15 and the McLaren M16.