Less than 250 miles. That is how much this McLaren F1 has been driven since the moment it rolled off the production line in Woking, England, back in 1995 until now. That is almost three whole decades that it spent as the absolute garage queen.
This 1995 McLaren F1 drove an average of 8 miles per year for almost three decades. The F1 changed the automotive world forever. Conceived by genius designer Gordon Murray, who was backed by Ron Dennis, the model entered production in 1992. It looked as if it had just dropped from another planet. It was unlike anything seen until that moment.
The ultimate sports car with infused F1 tech crowned itself as the fastest naturally aspirated production car ever built and still holds that aura that it came with back in the early 1990s when it was the most technologically advanced car ever produced.
Some called it a work of art. Others slammed the futuristic design. It was all carbon fiber-reinforced polymers, magnesium, and gold, all packed up in a lightweight construction.
When it hit the market, the McLaren F1 was the most expensive production car ever sold at $815,000. But since that moment, its value has skyrocketed over the years, and exclusivity has been one of the factors. Only 64 production cars were made.
Photo: RM Sotheby's
On March 31, 1998, pro driver Andy Wallace took an XP5 prototype with a modified rev limiter to set the Guinness World Record for the world's fastest production car at the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany.
It hit 240.1 mph (386.4 kph), which was more than what the modified Jaguar XJ220 did in 1993. The previous record was 218.3 mph (351 kph). To this day, there was no other production car that was capable of going quicker than that with the help of forced induction.
And things went much further. Once it hit the race track, the McLaren F1 GTR started making the rules. 1995 was its first year of racing. That same year, the participating F1s finished first, third, fourth, fifth, and 13th at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, leaving everyone wide-eyed, marveled, and intrigued.
McLaren F1s ended up in the hands of the most respected car collectors. Fashion designer Ralph Lauren, comedian Jay Leno, and seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton are on the list. Leno once said that the F1 is one of the greatest cars of the 20th century. And it does make sense.
Photo: RM Sotheby's
Chassis 029 is unique, sporting a one-off Creighton Brown paintwork like no other McLaren F1 ever made, over a Light Tan and Brazilian Brown leather and Alcantara.
But what makes the car super special is its very low mileage, which is the lowest known so far. At under 400 kilometers covered in the past three decades, it joins an exclusive club, but none of the others in the club covered such a short distance and none has even been offered publicly. Low mileage or not, rarely do such cars pop up for sale.
Chassis 029, this F1 was the 25th built by McLaren and the last produced in 1994. It rolled off the production line in Woking on December 23, as a 1995 model year, and was delivered to its first owner, a respected car collector from Japan.
He was the one who requested the addition of a fitted luggage and a tool roll trimmed in the same Light Tan leather as the interior. There is no other McLaren F1 to drive through the factory gate with these features.
Photo: RM Sotheby's
The F1 spent most of its life in Japan but set wheels on American soil in 2013 when it was federalized for road use by JK Technologies. It lived for a while in Pennsylvania. But despite being fully legal, it is still locked inside a garage as the owner is probably scared that any mile added to the odometer, scaled to a top speed of 240 mph (386 kph), might make the value of this motorized treasure drop.
This means that the 6.1-liter (370-cubic-inch) V12 engine is longing to roar and prove it still has it. When finally unleashed, the V12 pumps out 618 horsepower (627 metric horsepower) and 479 pound-feet (650 Newton meters) of torque. Those were enough for a run from 0 to 60 mph (0 to 97 kph) in 3.2 seconds.
The current owner purchased it in 2021 and moved it to North Carolina as the third owner to get his hands on the unique McLaren. The model is auctioned off by RM Sotheby's during a sealed auction taking place in New York from May 13 to 16. The model is estimated at an eye-watering $20 million. But the results of the sealed auctions remain behind closed doors. However, the poor F1 can only hope that the next owner will allow it to stretch its legs every once in a while.
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