I have been in a lot of rooms when a lot of money changed hands, but I had never watched $25 million buy a single car until last week. I was standing maybe thirty feet from the block at the St. Regis on Saadiyat Island when the 1994 McLaren F1 crossed it, and I will tell you exactly what that sounds like. It sounds like a room full of people who all think they are unshockable, going completely quiet, then exhaling at once when the hammer finally drops at $25,317,500. I had spent the preview crouched next to this car for longer than was strictly dignified. This was not just any F1. It was chassis 014, the 14th of only 64 road-specification cars McLaren ever built, delivered new to the Brunei royal family and originally finished in Titanium Yellow over black. In 2007 it went home to Woking, was repainted in Ibis White and fitted with the exceptionally desirable High Downforce Kit and the LM-specification interior. It even came with its original Facom tool chest, which is the kind of detail that makes people like me go a bit weak. Why the McLaren F1 is the car all others answer to If you are new to this, let me save you some time. The McLaren F1 is, by fairly broad agreement, the greatest road car ever made, and the numbers back up the poetry. Gordon Murray set out in 1991 to build the purest driver’s car imaginable, chased a 1,000 kilogram target, and landed at 1,130, which is still absurdly light for a machine that will do 240 mph. He fitted a central driving seat flanked by two passengers, lined the engine bay in gold foil to manage heat, and refused power steering, power brakes and traction control because he wanted nothing between the driver and the road. The engine is the part that still makes engineers smile. Murray wanted something compact and naturally aspirated, so BMW’s Paul Rosche built him a bespoke 6.1-litre V12 that produced 627 horsepower and weighed just 266 kilograms. Two years after launch, almost by accident, the F1 won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in 1995, taking first, third, fourth and fifth. A road car, on its first attempt, at the toughest race in the world. The part nobody believes anymore Here is the fact I kept repeating to people around the block, because it genuinely stuns them. When the F1 launched in 1993 at around £635,000, McLaren could not sell them. Jay Leno has admitted he had to talk to everyone he knew before committing. Rowan Atkinson called it an extraordinary leap of faith. Today standard road cars trade between roughly £14 and £20 million, and the race and upgraded cars go for more. Image Credits: Sam Chick/RM Sothebys, accessible at the link. So when I say $25.3 million might still be cheap, I am not being dramatic for clicks. A global classic car insurer’s data now rates the F1 and its GTR racing sibling as the two most collectible cars on earth, ahead of even the Ferrari 250 GTO. The buyers with the real money want the cars they had on their bedroom walls, and for a whole generation now entering its peak earning years, that poster was an F1. What it felt like in the room The thing the price tag cannot convey is the reverence. People did not crowd this car the way they crowded the louder, newer hypercars across the hall. They approached it almost carefully, the way you approach something in a museum, and the bidding had that same hush. When it blew past its $21 million estimate there were a couple of soft laughs, the nervous kind, the kind that says we are watching history and we know it. I left the room thinking the same thing I think every time I stand next to one. We will not see its like again, because nobody is allowed to build a car this uncompromising anymore. The F1 is not expensive. It is the benchmark everything else is quietly measured against, and at $25 million it may well look like a bargain a decade from now.
