You can now choose between the Screen & Screenless Elva

Clever as McLaren’s “Active Air Management System” (AAMS) is, the hugely fast Elva is still perfectly capable of totally ruining your face.

To keep that from happening you could simply leave your Elva tucked away in your garage alongside all the other incredible cars you never, ever drive. You could wear a full-face crash helmet. Or maybe you could ask McLaren to do you one with a windscreen. Novel idea, we know.

You can now choose between the Screen & Screenless Elva

McLaren Elva Windscreen Edition

Yup – McLaren will happily build you an Elva with a windscreen, washer jets, sun visors, and wipers instead of its impressive, but not infallible, Active Air Management System (AAMS). The windscreen-equipped Elva still does without a roof or side windows, mind, and there is a slight weight penalty. Though the windscreen car does without all the AAMS gubbins, McLaren expects the glass, wipers, and carbon surround to add around 20kg.

Built not just for owners who’d rather have a physical windscreen, but also to actually make the Elva road-legal in certain US states, we’re promised its “dynamic performance and stiffness remain unchanged from the screenless car”. Tech specs haven’t been finalized, but we’d be surprised it if was any slower.

The Elva is built around McLaren's carbon-fiber monocoque structure shared with the 720S and Senna and features an 804-hp version of the 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V-8 found in those other supercars.

McLaren is still testing the design and is thus yet to publish performance figures, but as a reference, the Elva without the windshield will hit 62 mph from rest in 2.8 seconds and 124 mph in 6.8 seconds.

149 Elvas will be built, each costing £1.425million before options. Customers who’ve chosen to have a windscreen will get their cars towards the end of this year. How would you take yours?

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