If we talk about the first McLaren sports car produced for the street and not for the circuits, you will easily know which Woking model we are referring to: the McLaren F1. A kind of fantastic animal for how difficult it is to come across one of them… unless you are in the two countries that have become Eden of this exclusive model.
Everything that surrounds the McLaren F1 has a special aura: his conception as well. It was the year 1988 when the British designer Gordon Murray was in the waiting room of the Milan airport: he was coming home after the Monza GP. In that time, he picked up a napkin and began sketching the lines of a streamlined three-seat sports car. The McLaren F1 has just been born.
From 106 to 100 units
A total of 106 units: of these 64 units were standard. They were joined by 29 GTRs, six LMs and three GTs plus the four versions focused on the world of competition: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the FIA GT Championship, the Japanese Gran Turismo Championship…
Production of the McLaren F1 ended in 1998 and since then many have dedicated themselves to tracking down those 106 examples over the years. Rather: one hundred copies because six of them were destroyed. It has been, finally, Hagerty who has compiled the most reliable whereabouts of all the remaining British supercars: most of them are in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The world cast of the McLaren F1
The US is home to 25 units, while in Great Britain (where it was designed and built) there are 18 examples.. However, those numbers refer to the 64 road models that include the standard McLaren F1s, three F1 GTs and five prototypes. If we add the competition variants, things change: in his native country there would be, in total, 40 (22 in the race) and in North America, 30 (5 in the race).
Although the United States and the United Kingdom are home to the majority of McLaren F1 cars, Brunei is the country with the largest number of units belonging to the same person: Sultan Muda Hassanal Bolkiah, which has three McLaren F1 street cars and four competition models. In Bahrain there are also seven, while in Germany, Switzerland and Japan there are four units. In Hong Kong, Mexico and New Zealand there are two registered specimens (for each of the three countries), while Australia and Singapore have one.