Flemke - Is this your McLaren? (Vol 5)

[dom9]

From Chris Harris' podcast with David Clark - it sounds like he might have 'a few', at least a couple of complete ones and a lot of parts. Sounds like BMW sold a lot of the engines/parts off wholesale, effectively.

[flemke]

hyphen said:

Lotus Evija unveiled yesterday.

What do you think of it Flemke? Vids all over Youtube if you havent seen it yet.

Its an EV though, so you may not be keen?

Hmmm....
It looks awful, weighs twice as much as a Lotus should, and what exactly is the point of 1900bhp?
I really cannot see them selling 150 of the things at £2m a copy.
I guess that Lotus reckon the future is electric and they need to get into that game, but this strikes me as a complete horlicks.

[flemke]

SydneyBridge said:

Why so many for sale??
are owners thinking the market has reached the peak?

I don't think there is anything special happening here. If one looked around, at pretty much any point during the last decade there was more than one car for sale.

Of the ones mentioned, the white car with HDK has been for sale for the last 18 months, and the problem was twofold:
- It's a former Brunei car. Rightly or wrongly, owing to the terrible conditions in which the Brunei cars were kept, there is a taint associated with them. That doesn't mean that they are bad cars by any means (and indeed this one had a complete refurbishment by MSO after it was released from captivity), but because of that taint and other things being equal a seller might have to make a relatively small price concession.
- When this car first came for sale early last year through the factory, the owner was unwilling to make any price concession, and one might say that he was looking for a slight premium or at least the offered side of the market. I put a seriously interested party in touch with the factory, but they couldn't agree on price.
Having failed in that attempt to sell it, the owner has dealt with at least two more (I think it's three) dealers or marketing organisations, in each case expecting a different result. By using all these different dealers, he has queered the market for this particular car. In my opinion he needs either to hit a bid instead of being pricey or take it off the market for a couple of years.
- A third factor is that most buyers these days would rather have a standard car without HDK than a car to which the HDK was retrofitted. I knew of two different parties last year who were both desperate to buy F1s and would have paid strong prices, but only without the HDK.

As for #018, the other LM-ish car (#073?) sold about two years for a very good price, and I would expect this one to do as well.

I don't know anything about the SA car.

[flemke]

robinessex said:

BMW, with the help of its engineer Paul Rosche, made 350 of the 6.1-liter powerhouses for the British automaker, though only 106 examples of the F1 were ever produced.

So where are the unused engines then?

dom9 said:

From Chris Harris' podcast with David Clark - it sounds like he might have 'a few', at least a couple of complete ones and a lot of parts. Sounds like BMW sold a lot of the engines/parts off wholesale, effectively.

I am pretty sure that BMW did not make all those engines. Over the years I have had many conversations with McLaren about BMW Motorsport, the situation with the engines and the spare parts, and nothing I ever heard suggested that BMW had anything like such a trove - quite the contrary, in fact.
I was told at the time that McLaren were negotiating with BMW to buy the remaining spare parts (this was late '16/early '17) that there weren't actually that many spare parts to be had; in the case of certain parts, not even single example. They may have had a complete engine, but it was only one.
As for what David Clark said in that podcast, he's a car dealer - if you catch my drift.

[vincegail]

flemke said:

- A third factor is that most buyers these days would rather have a standard car without HDK than a car to which the HDK was retrofitted. I knew of two different parties last year who were both desperate to buy F1s and would have paid strong prices, but only without the HDK.

Why is the HDK a problem? Isn't the standard configuration of the car retrofittable, without any sign of the HDK ever present visable?

[flemke]

vincegail said:

flemke said:

- A third factor is that most buyers these days would rather have a standard car without HDK than a car to which the HDK was retrofitted. I knew of two different parties last year who were both desperate to buy F1s and would have paid strong prices, but only without the HDK.

Why is the HDK a problem? Isn't the standard configuration of the car retrofittable, without any sign of the HDK ever present visable?

Yes, it certainly is possible to remove the HDK and go back to original spec. Some people just want a car that has never been modified, regardless of whether it can be unmodified.

[epom]

1. 18 is my fave. Would he trade in the wife’s Tiguan I wonder ?

[S1KRR]

keo said:

I like the HDF kit but for me a silver original F1 is something special! Just looks so clean. I have got a soft spot for an orange F1LM though!

Ever since a certain "Mr F" pointed out that "silver is always just silver" I cant entertain it anymore for a car colour!


I also tend to think the HDF looks poor on the road cars because unlike the GTRs they don't have the side skirts (would foul the side panniers)



See the part with the sponsors on Kenwood, Asics etc.

Compared to a HDF equipped road car



So a road car has to be deep gloss black ala Mr Kidstons



Or perhaps a road legal GTR in one of the iconic liveries . I'm partial to 16R



007 and 16R were at different times owned by the same person IIRC

I fear this is not a decision I will ever get to make in real life of course

[ferrisbueller]

I think the standard silver car pictured #37 looks great. There are some styling aspects on the F1 I struggled with but the front end is so good and I think plain ole silver suits the car well.

[thegreenhell]

018 auction listing: https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/MO19/Monterey/l...

[S1KRR]

thegreenhell said:

018 auction listing: https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/MO19/Monterey/l...

It's a beautiful thing isn't it! It has a minidisc player though!

Could only be improved by Black wheels eh Flemke


Sadly I failed to win the Euromillions £96M on Friday, so I will not be bidding

[Sway]

S1KRR said:

It's a beautiful thing isn't it! It has a minidisc player though!

Do not mock the genius that is the minidisc...

[flemke]

S1KRR said:

thegreenhell said:

018 auction listing: https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/MO19/Monterey/l...

It's a beautiful thing isn't it! It has a minidisc player though!

Could only be improved by Black wheels eh Flemke


Sadly I failed to win the Euromillions £96M on Friday, so I will not be bidding

That car was bought by a friend of mine in 1999 or '00; he was the one who had McLaren put the LM engine in it (McLaren offered that retrofit for only a brief period of time, which had ended by the time I bought my car). He also spec'd the interior and paint. It's very unusual for an F1, probably the most GT-like in taste of all the F1 colour schemes. One could say that the silver wheels, or at least some variation of silver wheels, suit it.
I drove that car. It's nice; different from although not better than the standard car. It was funny when with the factory guys we took that car and my car to Bruntingthorpe for a little drive around. My friend was surprised and very frustrated to find that, although his car with the HDK was more stable than mine, because of the HDK and despite its greater BHP it was slower than my car in a straight line.

[PS2018]

@flemcke do you think your friend back in 1999/00 (and the small handful of others who had the LM engine fitted by Maclaren during that small window when it was available/possible to do so) kept their original engine?

[flemke]

PS2018 said:

@flemcke do you think your friend back in 1999/00 (and the small handful of others who had the LM engine fitted by Maclaren during that small window when it was available/possible to do so) kept their original engine?

No. The LM engine was installed in two cars, and part of the deal was that you swapped engines. It was possible to keep the old engine (just as it was possible for any owner to buy a spare engine), but that would have been a separate action.

[PS2018]

Thank you @flemcke that is interesting and no doubt it would have been approx 100k for the spare (standard) engine

[flemke]

PS2018 said:

Thank you @flemcke that is interesting and no doubt it would have been approx 100k for the spare (standard) engine

For the car about to be auctioned (#018), I don't know the exact price of each item, but in 2001 to respray and retrim it, add the High-Downforce Kit and swap to the LM engine cost £250k.

[PS2018]

Thanks @flemcke.
Do you know the next time there is an event where a lot of F1’s will be running? (uk) I went to the goodwood members meeting in 2015 and the F1 GTR high speed demonstration really was the highlight of the weekend for me. Did you go to that and is there anything similar in the diary for this year/next year?

[WCZ]

wonder which country it's going to sell to, shame that the gbp/usd is awful atm

[flemke]

PS2018 said:

Thanks @flemcke.
Do you know the next time there is an event where a lot of F1’s will be running? (uk) I went to the goodwood members meeting in 2015 and the F1 GTR high speed demonstration really was the highlight of the weekend for me. Did you go to that and is there anything similar in the diary for this year/next year?

For years there were no organised events. Then in about 2009/10 they had a 20th anniversary of something at MTC and got 21 (IIRC) F1s there. I attended that.
Since then an individual has started a private business arranging "tours". First they were mainly for F1s (on one of the first of these tours, in Italy, an owner rolled his F1 into a ditch, occasioning MSO's biggest-ever repair bill ); now they are for F1s and other "Ultimate Series" McLarens. I have never gone on any of these tours because they're not my kind of thing.