Monday, February 2, 2015

F1 McLaren History (my version)




Hello fellow gearheads of near and far! 

Today, I shall be discussing rare cars. No, not one-offs, but rare cars that had an extremely limited production run, such as the Corvette ZHZ, Ferrari 250 GTO, Maserati MC12, Bugatti Veyron and so on AND so forth. 

The car I want to talk to you about is the F1 McLaren. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was McLaren's second road-legal car. The first one was the 1968/9 McLaren M6 GT. Two were mad with a Ford 5.7 liter engine boasting some 370 HP. Bruce McLaren, McLaren Automotive's founder, aimed to produce 250 of these. Sadly, he died in a crash at Goodwood on July 2, 1970. The M6 GT project died along with him. 

Gordon Murray was the man that made the F1 McLaren possible. But before I tell you how many F1 McLarens were made and its variants, allow me to discuss the specs. The chassis is made of 100% carbon fiber--the first production car to do so and became the stepping stone for almost all production supercars to have a carbon fiber chassis for years to come. Rear wheel drive coupe, has a BMW 6.1 liter V12 because of that V12 it has 627 HP, a 6 speed manual gearbox, 0-60 in 3.2 seconds, 0-100 in 6.3 seconds, 0-124 in 9.8 seconds, 0-150 in 12.8 seconds, and 0-200 in 28 seconds. These specs made it the fastest car in the world with a top speed of 240 MPH. 

This is exactly why the F1 McLaren is such a cool car. Not only because of its looks and top speed, but because the engine bay has gold in it! It's also so ahead of its time because of the records it broke. The McLaren F1 is also faster than its successor the McLaren P1 and the other big hypercars of today such as the Porsche 918 spyder and the Ferrari Laferrari 

The materials used in the F1's interior include gold-plated face tool kit, tailored luggage to match interior, and light Connolly leather. Customers were given a special edition TAG Heuer 6000 Chronometer wristwatch with the car's serial number scripted below the center stem, side luggage compartment. It is also a 3-seater, the driver's seat being in the middle to give that real race-car-like feel. Unfortunately, the middle seat is one of its cons, making it difficult for the driver to enter and exit the vehicle. 

There are so many more details that I'd love to bore you with, but it's time to move on. There were 64 road cars and 2 special editions of which there were five LM or Le Mans models. The LM was based off the GTR race car to celebrate McLaren's 1995 Le Mans victory. McLaren manufactured two GT models with an HDK (high downforce kit) which some of the features included a front carbon fiber splitter, a big rear wing, and some new performance tires and some other things that i can't really think of at the moment which combing the two special editions together makes 8. There was 28 GTR racecars, and five preproduction road car prototypes, one LM prototype, and one making a 106 total. 

To end this post, I will say this ... McLaren was supposed to make 300 F1 McLarens, but built only 106. Twenty-one of the 64 road cars were sent to the USA.

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