On my way to work. I was like "Is that...?it can't be...!no way...! GET OUT THE ****ING CAMERA!!" Talk about a rare thing to see. Location: Sarasota FL at the corner of N Washington and University Parkway. This car wasn't too far away from Heffner. Wonder what's up. RMX Image Unavailable, Please Login
Not too far down the road from this is an F40 that I see nearly every day. Here's a quick pic I took. I wonder if it's the same guy? RMX Image Unavailable, Please Login
Jay Leno's car, he had an errand to run in your neck of the woods. I just saw him coming back from there a few minutes ago. Cross country errands only take a couple of hours when you are in that car .
I realize you are probably kidding Brian, but the car in REMIX's photo is chassis #003 whereas Leno's F1 is chassis #015. Nice spotting REMIX! >8^) ER
I saw a baby blue one in Baton Rouge about a year ago with Louisiana license plate, too. I followed it as best I could, but somehow he outran me... I was freaking out the whole time, and my girlfriend just gave me a really confused look the whole drive home.
I showed the pic to my fiancee. Her reaction? "Hey, is that the same car Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear talks about? The F1? Wow! I can't believe that is here in town!" She asked how rare it is to see one. I said, "about as unlikely as seeing a unicorn." RMX
Chassis #003 was the second production F1 built, having been completed in the beginning of 1994. Chassis #002 was built first for the Brunei Royal Family, then #003 and the #001 was completed after that. Chassis #003 was originally Ron Dennis' personal F1 and was used used as a demonstrator and development vehicle by McLaren until early 1996. It also handled some of the marketing and promotional tasks for McLaren. This photo below was featured in several magazines at the time, most notably in Car & Driver here in the USA as they reprinted portions of an article that had run in AutoCar magazine. Image Unavailable, Please Login In 1996 the car was sold to a customer in Japan who kept the car for more than a decade. Symbolic Motorcars of La Jolla, CA who are responsible for bringing the car to the USA in February of this year noted that when it arrived in Japan in 1996 it had already logged 20,000 kms, and added another 4,000 kms while over there. There were reports when it arrived here that it was headed for Texas for emissions certification and that the car had already been sold. It was spotted briefly in Texas a week or two later near Wallace Labs which handles that type of work, and then returned for a short time to Symbollic back in May of this year. It left again shortly after that and this is the first time I believe it's been spotted in the wild since then. I am not aware of who purchased the car or who the current owner might be, but the asking price including the EPA certification work was apparently a cool $2.5M USD so expect deep pockets were involved. That's about all that is known about the car from a general standpoint. Again, you are very lucky to have spotted it like that. >8^) ER
He can tell which car it is because of the "McLaren F1" decal ahead of the rear wheel that you can faintly see in the pic Image Unavailable, Please Login
Additionally, the discussion surrounding this car's arrival here in the USA in February, along with several good photos of it as presented by Symbolic and some others from users of this forum can be found in this thread starting at post #102: http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=137444688&postcount=102 If you have any other general questions about the F1, throw them out here and I will do my best. >8^) ER
Ehhhh, he was probably on his way to Walmart. I might have to make my way back down there. Wonder if he's staying in the area or passing through. BTW, if anyone's interested there's apparently another one going up on the block this month... http://www.whatonemillionbuys.com/mclaren-f1-on-the-auction-block-on-october-29
Totally skimmed over that question, but Chris is exactly right here. Studying the details of these cars has been my primary focus for several years now. It's fairly rare for me to see an image of a McLaren F1 and not be able to identify the specific chassis number. There are a few cars that remain "unknown" or we only have best guesses for, but the larger portion of F1s that spend time outside their climate controlled garages are easily reconizable for folks like Chris and I. The car you describe is chassis #036. It belonged to Mansour Ojjeh the President of the Tag-McLaren Group from the time it was built in 1995 until about mid-2006 when it came to the USA. Here's a photo of it in case you did not get one. Image Unavailable, Please Login >8^) ER
Thanks for the history lesson. I was VERY late to work today and just happened to have my Blackberry in my hand as I was driving. Just a coincidence I even saw it because it's very unassuming and I had like 3 seconds to get my phone ready. I drifted into the middle lane and got honked at as a result. Typically I don't pay much attention to spotting cars, but I've never seen one before even though Gerd Petrick lived here and had 2 of them at one time. I didn't realize there was such a fanatical following for these. It's a great car, but so unobtainable... RMX
my lone sighting was coming down independence pass into aspen when they were the hottest thing on wheels...had to blink to make sure i wasn't hallucinating !!
Well thanks again for the picture. Had you just come back with the story, I'm not sure we'd have been able to put the pieces together to determine exactly which car it was. Perhaps you'll get to see it again sometime - there are a few F1s that see what could be considered "regular use". It just depends on the mindset of the owner. You mention Petrik - he did indeed have a pair of F1s at one point. One was chassis #045 (dark silver) which is now with a NY F-Chatter who also happens to own chassis #024 and at one point owned #014. The second F1 Petrik owned was chassis #067 (standard silver) that ended up in the Silicon Valley in the hands of Elon Musk when he was the CEO of PayPal. He later relocated to Los Angeles when he started Space-X and the upstart electric car company, Tesla. Musk sold the car last year and it's now been spotted in Oregon with it's new owner Herb Kessler. >8^) ER
You probably saw chassis #042 when it was still silver and belonged to Mr Beal. That was the car Road & Track used twice. This shot from Exotic Spotter was reportedly taken there. >8^) ER Image Unavailable, Please Login
Not a problem. Typically I'm in my own world whilst driving and hardly notice others. Today was just one of those days. RMX