McLaren F1

If Ferraris are a dime-a-dozen to you, if you yawn at the sight of a new Lamborghini, if a Bugatti leaves you cold, and you wince at the words De Tomaso and Maserati, then we have a vehicle for you. Apparently, you are a person of elevated tastes (and elevated income). Apparently, even the finest things in life aren’t quite fine enough for your finely tuned lifestyle. So, Bunky,  if this is you,  just what car should you drive? Our suggestion: none other than a McLaren F1, a car that was built in a neat, tidy batch of 100 between 1993 and 1998, a car that had a suggested list price of $1 million, a car that, if you can find one and purchase  it right now, might well cost you more used that it cost new.

Not anything but the top of the heap

You might well be asking,  McLaren F1,  what the hell is that? Okay, cool down, we’re here to tell you what it is. The McLaren F1 is the fastest, production 3-seat car ever built. How swift? Would you believe,  240 (that’s not a typo error) miles per hour? You got it, 240!  Its closest competitor in the street-legal, series-production genre is the Jaguar XJ220, which was touted to top out at 220 mph (hence the name) but is more reliably believed to cease  accelerating at 212 mph or so. By way of another comparison, the Ferrari F50, thought to be the fastest street Ferrari ever, boasted a maximum speed 38 mph slower than the McLaren F1. When new, of course,  the F50 was also more than half a million dollars cheaper. So that’s just one indication of what the McLaren F1 truly is.

Unless you’re an aging Baby Boomer-racing fanatic,  you might not remember Bruce McLaren, but in the late Sixties,  he was a one-man gang who established  a very competitive Formula One racing team plus a team that absolutely dominated Can-Am sports car racing. The New Zealand native overcame a crippling illness in his youth to become a topnotch open-wheel and sports car driver, but his real expertise  was combining his driving skills with engineering savvy. Thinking that his Cooper F1 team was lagging in development of new, more competitive racecars in the mid-Sixties, he ventured out on his own to create  his own team. After experiencing growing pains during its first couple of years on the F1 circuit, Team McLaren started  to hit its stride in 1967, becoming a competitive force in F1 and taking its first of five consecutive Can-Am championships.

McLaren’s performance cut short

Unfortunately, McLaren died before his team became a dominant force on the Grand Prix circuit. He was killed in a development accident at England’s Goodwood racetrack when his Can-Am car’s bodywork unexpectedly let go and sent him careening into a concrete flag platform. The date was June 2, 1970, and McLaren was only  32 years old.

Amazingly, the organization he had forged reached even greater heights after his demise. Denny Hulme continued to dominate Can-Am racing, and McLaren has become, possibly, the most successful Formula 1 racing team in history. (Of course, Ferrari  has won more Grand Prix events than McLaren, but it has been competing in the series for far longer a time.) McLaren cars and drivers, who have included such luminaries as Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost,  and Mika Hakkinen, have been victorious in F1 races more than 120 times. The team has won an amazing 19 Formula One World Championship titles in addition to dominating Can-Am events (56 wins between 1967 and 1972) and captivating three Indianapolis 500 victories.

With this kind of pedigree, it seemed that building a street-legal vehicle might be a natural extension of the McLaren brand. After all, Ferrari certainly uses its racing successes to sell its passenger cars. But McLaren’s organization resisted that temptation until 1993 when, with the superexoticar segment booming as it never had before, the company decided to venture out into this new dominion. Naturally, they didn’t go halfway. Instead of giving the task of designing the car to an outside contractor or a junior engineer, they dumped the project right in the lap of Gordon Murray, the engineer most responsible for the company’s F1 racecars. To design the sleek bodywork, they employed Peter Steven, who had penned supercars for Jaguar and others. They settled on BMW Motorsport for the V-12 engine. They also set a price bogey of $1 million each copy. (Take that, Ferrari, huh?)

Three seats a scarcity

From the beginning, the McLaren F1 differentiated itself from its exalted brethren not only by its breathtaking list price but also by its meer audacity. Who else would ever consider creating a 3-seat exoticar? Didn’t “mother-in-law” bench go out with the Stutz Bearcat? But Murray wanted to give his drivers a driving  slot  that would give them some of the sensations of piloting an F1 racecar, so he positioned  the steering wheel front and center, while the two passengers ride on either side, slightly behind the driver. Some might think three isn’t the coziest number that you’ll ever do, but those forward-thinkers among us might consider the car fit for a modern-day m�nage a trois.

The McLaren F1 is evenly unconventional in terms of body construction. There is no aluminum tube space-frame here. The entire chassis is carbon fiber, which is incredibly stiff and  strong for its weight. Attachment points for things like the car’s sophisticated all-independent suspension are magnesium or  aluminum  pieces baked right into the chassis structure. As an example of the car’s attention to detail, the “weaves” of the carbon fiber fabric are perfectly aligned in adjoining pieces for both strength and appearance. On top of the chassis, the Steven-designed body is also executed in flawlessly finished carbon fiber.

While the voluptuous, state-of-the-art  body justifiably receives raves, it is the V-12 engine that gives the McLaren F1 its roar. It might have seemed logical for McLaren to reach into the parts bin of BMW or another high-end manufacturer for the engine, but, again, no compromises were in order for this great car. Instead,  McLaren commissioned the design of an all-new six-liter V-12 from BMW Motorsport, an engine specifically produced for the McLaren F1’s duties as a street car. The sixty-degree, dual-overhead-cam engine is actually  a work of automotive art. With 48-valves churning, this generally aspirated powerplant delivers 627 horsepower at 7,400 rpm. Its torque figure is slightly less dizzying but still remarkable: 479 pound-feet at 5,600 rpm.

Tremendously light, with humungous engine

All this power is applied to a vehicle with a curb weight of  only  2,500 pounds. By way of comparison, that’s  simply  about 100 pounds over  a current Mazda Miata weighs, but while the Miata has 142 horsepower to propel it, the McLaren has four-and-a-half times that. The result: from a stop 60 miles per hour arrives in only  3.2 seconds.  Maximum  speed is the aforementioned 240 miles per hour.

While you might naturally assume this baby is as Spartan as a racecar, that is simply not true. Each McLaren was custom-tailored for its owner but the company did not eschew niceties like leather upholstery,  CD stereo sound system, and power-operated windows. After all, the F1 is a street car.

If you’d like a copy for your personal collection, if you’re tired of your Ferraris, etc, etc., our advice is to directly call McLaren. They keep pretty close tabs on their prominent offspring, and if you sport their kind of bank account,  they might well hook you up–for, say, $1.2 million.  Similar to the price of Mad magazine: “cheap.”

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