McLaren Elva: first test of wild 804bhp roofless supercar - Top Gear

One of my earliest prized possessions was a battered and chipped scale model of a McLaren M-series Can-Am car.

Looking at the classic McLaren M model racers now, they still seem impossibly raw and fabulously dangerous.

This is where the new McLaren Elva comes in.

For 149 speed-obsessed nostalgic old gits like me – and a couple of the inevitable and permanently priapic influencers – the Elva is like being strapped to your favourite love interest and dipped in warm chocolate.

There’s a small vertical screen, as per normal McLaren practice, for controlling things like the heater and, more importantly, 15-level drift control.

The bodywork is comprised of three, huge carbon fibre sculptures – you can’t just call them mere body panels – which swoop and swell like the Cotswold countryside tightly over the components within.

Known as the McLaren Active Air Management System (AAMS), when activated – there’s a button to turn it on and off; it’s not always on – it raises a flap about six inches into the air flowing over the front of the car, to reduce the blast on the driver and passenger.

If you suddenly find yourself doing 60mph and want to reduce the blast, you’ll have to slow to 30mph to make it pop up again, but that might be peculiar to this pre-production car.

Owners will be able to spec a short bug shield as per the later M model race cars, which many might see as essential not least because it makes the Elva look more racer authentic.

Because, there is no getting away from it, the incessant wind blast in the Elva above 80mph is nothing short of brutal.

Even hunkered down as far as possible and wearing a helmet it feels like you’ve been glued to the front of a fighter jet.

Looking like a combination of a human smiley emoji and Sonic the Hedgehog he claims that the Elva is the most fun he’s had in a car in years, and I agree.

Even at 40mph the wind blast yanks at our hats and makes our eyes water uncontrollably.

If I had to compare it with anything, it feels like a Lotus Elise’s big brother.

Were we missing the point or has McLaren just made the world’s fastest, most powerful and most expensive hairdryer.

I have driven this particular road hundreds of times in more than 20 different cars, so I know it like the alphabet.

And the Elva simply destroys it.

The suspension, in Sport mode, millimetrically judged, feeding back just enough road data to let you know what’s going on, smoothing but not smothering detail.

Majestic response, power that never ends and rapid gear changes accompanied by the crack of exhaust… it just feels like the most polished jewel of a car.

If I had to compare it with anything, it feels like a Lotus Elise’s big brother.

It just makes the whole experience completely more engaging and fun.