McLaren F1
A road car built with no compromises — and, for years, the fastest one on Earth.
Gordon Murray's McLaren F1 began from a simple, uncompromising brief: build the best driver's car in the world, with no concession to cost or category. The result was singular. The driver sits front and centre, flanked by two passenger seats set slightly back — a layout borrowed from single-seat racing that gives an unobstructed view of the road.
Behind the cabin sat a BMW-built 6.1-litre V12 making 627 hp, its bay lined with roughly 16 grams of gold as a heat shield. There was no turbocharging, no electronic driver aids to speak of, and very little weight: the car came in around 1,260 kg. In 1998 an F1 reached 240.1 mph, making it the fastest production car in the world — a record it held for years.
Just 64 road cars were built. Decades on, the F1 is still the reference point every extreme road car is measured against — not for a single figure, but for the totality of the thing.
The McLaren F1 is a sports car that was the first type approved road-going car manufactured by British Formula One team McLaren. It was the last road-legal, series-produced sportscar to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans race outright, as well as being recognised as the world's fastest 'production car' when launched. The original concept, by leading technical designer Gordon Murray, convinced then head of McLaren Ron Dennis, to support McLaren leaping into manufacturing road-going sportscars. Car designer Peter Stevens was hired to do the car's exterior and interior styling.
Text adapted from “McLaren F1” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗ · retrieved 2026-07
- Engine
- 6.1L naturally aspirated V12 (BMW S70/2)
- Power
- 627 hp
- Weight
- 1,260 kg
- Dimensions
- 4,290 × 1,820 × 1,150 mm
Road-car count only (64 of 106 total F1s built across all variants: 64 road, 5 LM, 2 GT, 2 HDK, 28 GTR race cars, 5 prototypes — LM tracked as a separate catalog entry). Held the production-car top speed record (240.1 mph) for years.
Research sources (1)
Similar machines
Matched on body class, era and origin from register data — never hand-picked.