Super-quick, super-cool and super-expensive - the McLaren F1 was THE supercar of the Nineties.
In the third of a series charting the wonders of the motoring world, Adrian Hearn presents the McLaren F1 - Britain’s greatest ever supercar.
Engineering masters Ron Dennis and Gordon Murray set out in 1988 to make ‘the finest drivers’ car ever built’.
Six years later and petrolheads were foaming at the mouth at the sight of the McLaren F1 – a 240mph supercar built in Woking.
Engine McLaren used the BMW S70/2 engine, a block designed and built specifically for F1. The 6.1-litre V12, mated with a six-speed gearbox produced 627bhpm, meaning the supercar could accelerate from 0-60mph in a bowel-bellowing 3.2 seconds.
Performance On March 31, 1998, sports car racer Andy Wallace hit a production car world record speed of 240.1mph in an F1 on Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien test track. The McLaren held the record for seven years until the Koenigsegg CCR beat it in March 2005 - by 1mph.
Cost If you wanted an F1, you’d have to splash out £630,000. The Sultan of Brunei bought EIGHT. And you’ll need easy access to petrol, with the F1 doing just six miles per gallon.
Servicing Mclaren advise the F1 should be serviced every 6,000 miles at the cost of £30,000 – the same as a new top end Lotus Elise or ten-year-old Ferrari F355.
Production From 1994 – 1998, just 100 McLaren F1s were built, with 72 designed for the road and 28 for the track.
Seating The unique seating in the F1 means the driver sits in the middle, with a passenger on each side – the perfect solution for weight distribution.
Bespoke products Buyers of a new F1 would have received a golf bag, tailored to fit on the passenger’s seat and luggage holdalls with the motor’s chassis number embossed on them. The F1 also came with a modem, which enables customer care to analyse data from the car’s computer and carry out a series of diagnostic checks from anywhere in the world.
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