Elva beat Colin Chapman and Lotus to the track with a mid-engined sports-racer with 1961’s Mk VI.

Typically Coventry Climax FWA-powered, the Elva Mk VI pioneered low frontal area “lay down” design that maximized the performance of small displacement engines and super light weight design.

The Elva Mark VI’s legacy characteristics, particularly the tall wheel arches necessitated by its 15” wheels and its drum brakes, limited its competitive life in the fast-moving evolution of sports-racing cars in the mid-Sixties.

After only two years it was superseded by the Elva Mk VII, arguably Elva’s most successful sports-racer and a car that successfully challenged Chapman’s Lotus 23 in an era dominated by Britain’s specialist constructors.

Designed by Eric Marsden, the Elva Mk VII is almost impossibly diminutive, enclosing its driver under a low, sloping nose in an offset position that integrates the chassis, suspension and rear-mounted engine and transmission in as close to unity as possible...