Eighteen-year-old, but close-to-new, McLaren for sale

4 May, 2016

If you’re like any normal car enthusiast in your 20s or 30s, growing up, you probably idolized the McLaren F1 on video games, such as Gran Turismo. With a single centre seat, New Zealand heritage, and more horsepower than a Pikes Peak Escudo with a stage-four turbo kit, it was one to own. Now, you can buy your very own 1998 example. 

Out of the realms of the affordable, I never thought I would see the day where a vehicle such as this would come up for grabs. Before the internet, I was so separated from such a vehicle, that the only version I could get my hands on involved a plugged in controller, a bag of chips, and an entire weekend. 

Now, though, with the internet connecting every edge of the globe to one monitor, you start to see and hear things that were once only reserved for those in the know. A McLaren F1, in concours condition certainly doesn’t get missed by my watchful eye, and it appears McLaren Special Operations’ Heritage Division is selling one. The most insane part? The mileage. 

This isn’t your flogged out, been-around-the-block example. No, this example is in as-new condition with only 2800 miles on the clock. McLaren has made it clear that the vehicle will be sold as-new, too. What this means for prospective buyers, is that you will receive your 18-year-old McLaren with all the extras as it was released from the factory. 

Unfortunately, McLaren hasn’t listed a price for the McLaren yet, but, if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it — much like myself. Back to playing video games it is! 

Images: McLaren

Design accord

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.