Flemke - Is this your McLaren? (Vol 5)

[Crockefeller]

flemke said:

I have no information on that question. They might possibly add some Type-R elements (such as the carbon seats, gear-knob, mesh screen under the rear window), but no way would they give it an "R" badge.

Wrt cost, in round numbers I reckoned that a total refresh (colour change, rebuilt engine, 'box, suspension, brakes, interior retrimmed) would be IRO £75-85k.

Thanks for the clarification on pricing. Only really suitable for NSX-Rs it seems. Are you intending to go for a full on refresh or just certain elements. Would be great to see a thread or some before and after pics when it's done.

[flemke]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

That number - $600k - is very high.
Complete colour change and interior retrim are less than £100k (which includes VAT, which would not apply to a US car). HDK is rear wing, front wings/bumper/splitter, usually (but not necessarily) larger wheels and new tyres. There may be a couple additional pieces of bodywork involved, such as working around the rear deck and brake flap on the standard car, but all that would cost nowhere near the additional £350k implied in $600k total.
Put it this way: although it was a few years ago, the total cost of adding the HDK, respraying and retrimming the car, and installing the LM-spec engine was a lot less than $600k.

[flemke]

dom9 said:

flemke said:

EFA.

Oh? Gordon sold his???

Could be....

[flemke]

Crockefeller said:

flemke said:

I have no information on that question. They might possibly add some Type-R elements (such as the carbon seats, gear-knob, mesh screen under the rear window), but no way would they give it an "R" badge.

Wrt cost, in round numbers I reckoned that a total refresh (colour change, rebuilt engine, 'box, suspension, brakes, interior retrimmed) would be IRO £75-85k.

Thanks for the clarification on pricing. Only really suitable for NSX-Rs it seems. Are you intending to go for a full on refresh or just certain elements. Would be great to see a thread or some before and after pics when it's done.

I think going to all that trouble of working through a Japanese dealer (ROW dealers not eligible), shipping the car to Japan, et al, would be worth it only to do the whole thing.
Once we get started, I wouldn't mind posting something here, although I expect the issue would be getting the work-in-process information from Japan.

[dom9]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

dom9 said:

flemke said:

EFA.

Oh? Gordon sold his???

If so, I would imagine that the price was barking - probably about the best road car provenance possible . The Car, from The Man.....

Self-serviced, load of miles, probably got £5 an half a Twix

All jokes aside; I assumed it would be something he'd never let go and would be left to his kids etc!

[flemke]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

dom9 said:

flemke said:

EFA.

Oh? Gordon sold his???

If so, I would imagine that the price was barking - probably about the best road car provenance possible . The Car, from The Man.....

That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at the cost of prototypes, in general, is: why would you pay as much for an unfinished, warts-and-all work-in-progress as you would for the finished article?

[McAndy]

flemke said:

That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at the cost of prototypes, in general, is: why would you pay as much for an unfinished, warts-and-all work-in-progress as you would for the finished article?

Provenance. Some humans are an oddly sentimental bunch.

[crosseyedlion]

I'm just embarking on a little F1-related project, and will be mining every bit of info I can from these threads (although I have read it from the start already) and all the other sources online.

Is there any blueprints available...for anything on the car?

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[flemke]

McAndy said:

flemke said:

That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at the cost of prototypes, in general, is: why would you pay as much for an unfinished, warts-and-all work-in-progress as you would for the finished article?

Provenance. Some humans are an oddly sentimental bunch.

Agreed.
The question is, to what extent is value enhanced by "provenance" (the car having had a meaningful part in history or having been owned by a famous person), and to what extent is value diminished because the car is, by definition, a less good product than the finished version?

[crosseyedlion]

flemke said:

McAndy said:

flemke said:

That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at the cost of prototypes, in general, is: why would you pay as much for an unfinished, warts-and-all work-in-progress as you would for the finished article?

Provenance. Some humans are an oddly sentimental bunch.

Agreed.
The question is, to what extent is value enhanced by "provenance" (the car having had a meaningful part in history or having been owned by a famous person), and to what extent is value diminished because the car is, by definition, a less good product than the finished version?

On the same point, was the value of Rowan Atkinson's car influenced by the well publicised crashes?

I don't doubt the rebuild in the slightest, but in 30 years times would these incidents be in the history dossier or ignored?

Preproduction vehicles frequently experience severe abuse which would make me think twice.

[flemke]

crosseyedlion said:

I'm just embarking on a little F1-related project, and will be mining every bit of info I can from these threads (although I have read it from the start already) and all the other sources online.

Is there any blueprints available...for anything on the car?

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

I've never seen a complete set of drawings, which I suspect exist in only McLaren's and Gordon's personal records.

You will find floating on the internet a nice cutaway drawing of the entire car by Mark Roberts, who was part of the design team.

Doug Nye's book about the McLaren F1 project, Driving Ambition, contains front and side drawings of the engine, transaxle, and gearstick. The "Limited Edition" of the book contains those drawings plus more detailed ones of the gear clusters, clutch, and transaxle housing.

Drawings of the nut-and-bolt nitty-gritty are hard to come by, apart from at McLaren, as I said. I'm not sure how the one that you have found, of the pedal assembly, got into the internet domain, but drawings like that of the rest of the car are uncommon. I have a few around here somewhere, but not sure where. I can recall the drawing of the steering wheel assembly, which despite its simple appearance must comprise at least a hundred parts.

For starters, you may want to look for IMechE paper C466/007/93. It was written by Steve Randle, who designed most of the suspension on the car. The purpose of the paper was to explain the engineering principles applied, and particularly what I call the asymmetric bushes that were conceived and used to control compliance. This paper has 3 good drawings of F and R suspension.

You may also want to search amongst UK patents. IIRC McLaren got several for the car. The one that comes to mind, for the three-seat configuration, had only conceptual sketches, but there may be other patents that offer more detail.

[flemke]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

flemke said:

Agreed.
The question is, to what extent is value enhanced by "provenance" (the car having had a meaningful part in history or having been owned by a famous person), and to what extent is value diminished because the car is, by definition, a less good product than the finished version?

Obviously its always a case by case basis, but I would say the Pro would outweigh the Con in this instance.....


(and GM being revered as a messiah to many, helps)

Yes, I'd agree as to XP3. For XP4, I can't see why its provenance would be anything special (relative to other F1s).

[flemke]

crosseyedlion said:

flemke said:

McAndy said:

flemke said:

That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at the cost of prototypes, in general, is: why would you pay as much for an unfinished, warts-and-all work-in-progress as you would for the finished article?

Provenance. Some humans are an oddly sentimental bunch.

Agreed.
The question is, to what extent is value enhanced by "provenance" (the car having had a meaningful part in history or having been owned by a famous person), and to what extent is value diminished because the car is, by definition, a less good product than the finished version?

On the same point, was the value of Rowan Atkinson's car influenced by the well publicised crashes?

I don't doubt the rebuild in the slightest, but in 30 years times would these incidents be in the history dossier or ignored?

Preproduction vehicles frequently experience severe abuse which would make me think twice.

The value of Atkinson's car definitely suffered because of the big crash. Having the engine torn loose from the chassis and coming to rest many feet away from it is not something to wave off.

On the other hand, the view was that because the car had been owned by a fairly famous person and because it was a one-owner car, the pros and cons roughly balanced and the value should be in line with other, less storied cars.

[Jonesy23]

flemke said:

Drawings of the nut-and-bolt nitty-gritty are hard to come by, apart from at McLaren, as I said. I'm not sure how the one that you have found, of the pedal assembly, got into the internet domain, but drawings like that of the rest of the car are uncommon. I have a few around here somewhere, but not sure where. I can recall the drawing of the steering wheel assembly, which despite its simple appearance must comprise at least a hundred parts.

The last time I saw that exact drawing of the pedal assembly it was on actual paper, along with a brake pedal arm being used as a paperweight as the anodising process had eroded it.

That would have been at Ilford Engineering; they were churning out all sorts of bits so had tanks, pedals, rear grills and other metal things going though. I have memories that they were complaining about having to re-manufacture a whole pile of tanks of some sort (oil tank maybe?) because the welds had been ground/polished flat and the spec & QA wanted them visible as that way they could see how good they actually were.

There was chat at the time about prototyping they were doing for Lotus on what became the Elise.

So if we're wondering where the drawing came from that's one possible source.

[crosseyedlion]

Superb information! Both of you! - Ill look into these.

Also copy of driving ambition and the 1:12 scale model are both on my purchase list this year.

Progress so far...(day 2)


I'm most looking forward to try and model and CAE the carbon monocoque

Interestingly the patents originally lodged for the F1 have just expired (in particular the 3 seat config. - not to be mistaken with GM's new 3 seat config patent, very subtly different) - so this may pave the way for another application of some of this cars genius.

[vtgts300kw]

Sway said:

As I understood it, pretty much all the Brunei collection were kept in utterly appalling conditions in effectively a rainforest! So I'm assuming that that bill was perhaps for a bit more than a 'refresh'... Happy to be corrected.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that comment is wrt cars in the collection at the calibre of the F1's. There are images floating around online that show some of the halo cars in the collection, being kept in a glass showroom type setup on the roof of one of the large warehouses. I think a lot ( most? ) of the regular cars did suffer that fate, but it appears that some of the "important" were looked after.

[flemke]

vtgts300kw said:

Sway said:

As I understood it, pretty much all the Brunei collection were kept in utterly appalling conditions in effectively a rainforest! So I'm assuming that that bill was perhaps for a bit more than a 'refresh'... Happy to be corrected.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that comment is wrt cars in the collection at the calibre of the F1's. There are images floating around online that show some of the halo cars in the collection, being kept in a glass showroom type setup on the roof of one of the large warehouses. I think a lot ( most? ) of the regular cars did suffer that fate, but it appears that some of the "important" were looked after.

I can assure you that not all of the halo cars were looked after. Some of the best were badly neglected.

[Peloton25]

flemke said:

That number - $600k - is very high.
Complete colour change and interior retrim are less than £100k (which includes VAT, which would not apply to a US car). HDK is rear wing, front wings/bumper/splitter, usually (but not necessarily) larger wheels and new tyres. There may be a couple additional pieces of bodywork involved, such as working around the rear deck and brake flap on the standard car, but all that would cost nowhere near the additional £350k implied in $600k total.
Put it this way: although it was a few years ago, the total cost of adding the HDK, respraying and retrimming the car, and installing the LM-spec engine was a lot less than $600k.

Since I'm the source named on the above, I'll clarify that while I did not see the invoices, that piece of information was relayed to me via a friend of the owner who I don't doubt. The figure mentioned was said to be the total of all the money spent on the car after purchasing it at auction the prior year. This included more than just the makeover as the car had quite a bit of deferred maintenance that required sorting as well, and it essentially left the factory as a "new" car.

The interior received more than just your traditional retrim, as 014 was redone inside as LM-spec, bringing it closer to that of an actual F1 LM than any other road car. This included the bare carbon driver seat shell of the LM with sectional padding, along with the LM parking brake handle and shift knob. It also included segmented padding on the passenger seats with gloss carbon on all exposed surfaces. On the exterior, the High Downforce Kit was added along with a new topshell making it the only F1 road car with three vents over each front wheel arch like the F1 LM.

All of this work was done at a time when the $ to £ ratio was very nearly 2:1. Still might not add up perfectly, but should give a little more clarity as to how the figure could have been achieved.

Another F1 owner one year prior wrote in Sports Car Market Letter magazine that he had spent $300K on the full refresh of his F1 which was in a similar state of disrepair when he acquired it. His rebuild didn't include any of the elements of the Downforce Kit or LM-bits inside so comparing against that, the figure quoted for 014 seems believable to me.

>8^)
ER

[h0b0]

flemke said:

vtgts300kw said:

Sway said:

As I understood it, pretty much all the Brunei collection were kept in utterly appalling conditions in effectively a rainforest! So I'm assuming that that bill was perhaps for a bit more than a 'refresh'... Happy to be corrected.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that comment is wrt cars in the collection at the calibre of the F1's. There are images floating around online that show some of the halo cars in the collection, being kept in a glass showroom type setup on the roof of one of the large warehouses. I think a lot ( most? ) of the regular cars did suffer that fate, but it appears that some of the "important" were looked after.

I can assure you that not all of the halo cars were looked after. Some of the best were badly neglected.

I believe the "glass showrooms" were/are greenhouses where the cars are cooked. Was it Harry Metclafe that went over and documented the abuse?

[hurstg01]

flemke said:

vtgts300kw said:

Sway said:

As I understood it, pretty much all the Brunei collection were kept in utterly appalling conditions in effectively a rainforest! So I'm assuming that that bill was perhaps for a bit more than a 'refresh'... Happy to be corrected.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that comment is wrt cars in the collection at the calibre of the F1's. There are images floating around online that show some of the halo cars in the collection, being kept in a glass showroom type setup on the roof of one of the large warehouses. I think a lot ( most? ) of the regular cars did suffer that fate, but it appears that some of the "important" were looked after.

I can assure you that not all of the halo cars were looked after. Some of the best were badly neglected.

Having seen one of the 'important' cars the day after it arrived in the UK still in its 'Brunei' condition, I can say that the condition of it wasn't like others that hadn't been to Brunei, but nowhere near I feel 'appalling' can be mentioned. It needed a good clean / detail both inside, outside and in the engine bay, a good thorough service, a few minor tweaks, fresh tyres and perhaps a refresh of the headlining and alcantara areas but apart from that, I'd have been happy to take ownership of it.

I cannot however comment on any of the others cars still in Brunei.