AND THEN THERE WAS ONE
Some say money is the root of all evil and the subject of dollars is ever present in the world of classic and wonderful cars. The 1992 McLaren F1 road car is a magnificent piece of engineering worthy of any sort of examination yet so often the brilliance of this work of art is almost overshadowed by the vehicle’s financial appreciation.
Of course the car’s excellence, if not its scarcity, is a valid reason why it has become so valuable. New Zealand is but a small collection of islands in the South Pacific and a blip on the radar of global importance yet in recent times it has been home to three McLaren F1s out of a total production of 106 built over a six-year period ending in 1998.
As the stature of the McLaren F1 has grown, and with it the groundbreaking road car’s astounding worth, the number has dwindled to just one car residing in New Zealand — unless a quiet owner has another example squirrelled away in a garage somewhere. However, none of this should detract from our paying tribute to what surely is a unique piece of machinery.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but 25 years ago we could scarcely have imagined the McLaren F1 — then an already hugely costly NZ$1.5M car — would scale such heady heights by 2020.
In 1994, affable Auckland car dealer Mike Clark was looking after XP4, the first McLaren F1 to arrive on our shores. Mike’s well-known Auckland dealership, Clark’s of Khyber Pass, carried an impressive array of Mercedes,
