McLaren F1: How Can a ‘Hyper-GT’ merit an F1 AssoCiation?

When the McLaren F1 production began in 1992, the company's boss reportedly planning to sell at least 150 of the £ 640,000 car the road in order to generate profits.

In fact, when production ended in 1998, only 106 F1s were made: five prototypes, 64 standard road car, one LM prototype, five LM road cars, one Longtail prototype, two street car GTR Longtail and 28 cars racing. However, the race program is said to have been so successful that the project is still making money for McLaren.

For many, the relatively low sales still surprises today, but they also underline how expensive the car relative to the top-end opposition. Even shines in Autocar road test in 1994, which states the McLaren F1 "perhaps the fastest road car production world will ever see" is not enough to drive sales further.

In time, the scarcity of F1 has played in supporting, with tests such as Autocar also adds the iconic status of cars and encourage collectors scramble to have a car. Standard car prices pushing £ 10 million and LM-road will be sold for £ 8.8m in 2015.

Although many will see the contradictions in F1 - was designed to be the main road car - which was created as a hyper-GT 30 years on, the original brief for the car grew to encapsulate the highest ride quality and handling.

F1 designer Gordon Murray tried to persuade the famous Formula 1 partner McLaren, Honda, to supply F1 engines before BMW came on board and visited Japan twice to try to pull out of the deal.

While there, he and Ayrton Senna tasting NSX and history books cite Murray said: "At the time I was driving a Honda NSX, all the cars benchmark - from Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini - I have used as a reference in the development of my car vanished from the mind i. of course the car we would create, the McLaren F1, need to be faster than the NSX, but the NSX's ride quality and handling would become our new design target. "

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