The McLaren F1 began as a sketch drawn at an airport gate
Waiting for a flight home from the 1988 Italian Grand Prix, Gordon Murray sketched a three-seat sports car with the driver sitting dead centre. He pitched it to McLaren boss Ron Dennis as the ultimate road car. Ten years later a prototype hit 240.1 mph and became the fastest production car on record.
Murray had dreamed of a three-seater since youth. The central driving position gave clear visibility, with a passenger seat on either side. His recipe was low weight plus high power, pursued with costly materials: carbon fibre, titanium, Kevlar, magnesium and even gold. The F1 was the first production car built around a carbon-fibre monocoque, and it stayed lighter and sleeker than many later rivals despite carrying three adults. About 16 grams of gold foil lined each engine bay, reflecting heat away from the carbon bodywork.
Murray wanted Honda power, having been won over by the NSX on a visit to Honda's research centre with Ayrton Senna, but Honda declined to build a V12 or V10. He insisted on no turbochargers, trading raw power for reliability and responsiveness. BMW's motorsport arm, led by Paul Rosche, delivered a 6.1-litre V12 producing 618 horsepower, 14 percent more than requested and 16 kg heavier. Before real cars existed, two Ultima kit cars nicknamed Albert and Edward served as test mules, then were destroyed so magazines could not link the F1 to kit cars.
The car was unveiled in Monaco on 28 May 1992. In April 1993, during testing in Namibia, a driver in shorts and a T-shirt struck a rock and rolled the first prototype several times, walking away uninjured. Just 106 were built between 1992 and 1998. Although not designed for racing, modified versions won the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans, making it the last road-legal series production car to win the race outright.
On 31 March 1998 the XP5 prototype, with a raised rev limiter, reached 240.1 mph, beating the Jaguar XJ220's 217.1 mph. Autocar called it the finest driving machine yet built for public roads, and Channel 4 ranked it first among the 100 greatest cars in 2005. Owners have included Rowan Atkinson and George Harrison.
Source: McLaren F1
