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Good Guy Rowan.
Has incredibly valuable car. Actually uses it.
Has incredibly valuable car. Actually uses it.
Rowan Atkinson crashes his McLaren F1
- Thread starter boiltheocean
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- Alabamamania
A $1,350,000 automobile claim. Yowzers...I wonder what the insurance deductible was.
The lesson of the day is, if crash your valuable McLaren, you get to hang out with McLaren-Mercedes pits and make faces, as a perk for using their fine body shop.
The lesson of the day is, if crash your valuable McLaren, you get to hang out with McLaren-Mercedes pits and make faces, as a perk for using their fine body shop.
Robin
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The thing I can't understand is why anyone would want to buy or even own what is now in essence a cut and shut. All the articles talk about how the cost of repair is worth it considering how much the car is worth but seriously would any collector ever pay good money knowing its history?!
Plus how is it even original? so much has been done to this car its like Trigger's broom. It's like buying a vintage car where the chassis, engine and every body panel is new... at best its an in house replica.
200+mph in a repaired car.... no thanks. But hats of to Rowan for actually using the thing everyday.
Plus how is it even original? so much has been done to this car its like Trigger's broom. It's like buying a vintage car where the chassis, engine and every body panel is new... at best its an in house replica.
200+mph in a repaired car.... no thanks. But hats of to Rowan for actually using the thing everyday.
- 7,180
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- FLAT_TWELVE
Not sure about this. I guess Rowan's car is more a collectible than another car that belonged to Mr. nobodycares. Besides, would you buy a car like this with some 15 years without actually running? Hmmmm ... I'll guess it won't work well without going (on a truck, mind you) for a long visit to Woking first.
Roo
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He hasn't had it rebuilt to sell. He's had it rebuilt so he can drive it.
I have the same attitude to my cars; I don't care how much I can sell them for. I've bought them for me, not the next owner.
So what? There's plenty of F1s kept in temperature controlled garages that never turn a wheel. They'll certainly outnumber the F1s that are regularly used. So long as some are kept original, who cares what the rivet-counters think? It's good to see someone using the car for what it was designed for - driving.
McLaren
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McLaren rebuilds these cars the exact same way they were made new. Those body panels, internal parts, etc. on Atkinson's car are made exactly the same as the parts on a non-crashed McLaren. The only difference is the age of said parts.
Hard to call it a "replica" when everything is produced using the exact same materials & methods they used originally. Otherwise, any of the GTRs that were wrecked & had repairs done might as well be "in house replicas" too; the process is the same.
These cars go for around $5 million a piece now. $1.35 million for what McLaren build as a "new" car altogether after a wreck isn't that bad.
Robin
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Mclaren would have done a decent job no doubt but when the articles make out that its worth so much I don't see it seeing as it was in two pieces a month ago! Yes its an F1 but it was also a trashed one, depends how much his celebrity could offset that.
Even if the whole thing from the tub up is new (judging by how written off it looked it might be) it isn't an original F1 and shouldn't be valued as one IMO. They should have said the insurance basically paid for a newly made F1.
The thing is if Ferrari for example started making new 250's built to exactly the same spec using the same materials would it be worth the same as one made in the 60's and would it really be considered a genuine 250? A GTR is different because its way newer, mass produced and no where near as rare so whether its original from a few years ago is not so important.
Even if the whole thing from the tub up is new (judging by how written off it looked it might be) it isn't an original F1 and shouldn't be valued as one IMO. They should have said the insurance basically paid for a newly made F1.
McLaren
The thing is if Ferrari for example started making new 250's built to exactly the same spec using the same materials would it be worth the same as one made in the 60's and would it really be considered a genuine 250? A GTR is different because its way newer, mass produced and no where near as rare so whether its original from a few years ago is not so important.
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They wouldn't be able to do that. If the tub was new, it'd need a new VIN and new registration. It'd be a new car.
An acquaintance with expertise in aerospace carbonfibre repairs says that carbonfibre is actually a very easy substance to repair - it simply being a case of bonding new stuff onto old - with one issue, which he refers to as "barely visible impact damage". Bonding to damaged material you can't see causes further issues with delamination, so they'd have used extensive ultrasound and resonance scans to determine how much of the tub was damaged. They'd then have preserved as much of the original tub as they possibly (and safely) could and bonded the repairs to it. This actually wouldn't be all that expensive, but it'd take a while.
I'd suggest the majority of the cost would be replacing that very, very rare engine (and gearbox) that was effectively written off by walking down the road by itself.
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Probably not, but if said 250 was nearly written off and then almost completely rebuilt, would it be considered a replica?
I don't think so, as long as it indeed is the very same car there's no reason to devaluate Atkinson's F1 as a replica.
McLaren should lease Rowan one of early P1s, if the idea is to evoke the old F1 car it's hard to think of someone better to help to fine tune the new car than this man.
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Others have addressed the other parts, but I'll address this.
If Ferrari built a 250 out of identical parts and to identical spec, yes, it would be considered a genuine 250 (not necessarily "original" in the strictest sense of the word, but you've used the term "genuine" so I'll go with that). Just as the Ford Model T in Ford's UK heritage fleet, built completely from scratch but to original specification about a decade ago, is considered a genuine Model T.
It's just a very, very, very late model.
The subject is a grey area, but essentially there are three general areas when it comes to this sort of thing. The first is a copy - it might even look and drives like the original, but doesn't use official parts, may not even be constructed the same way etc. A bad example is those people who dress old MR2s up like Ferrari 355s, but there are "closer" copies.
The next is the replica. This, to most intents and purposes is like the original, but may differ in key details. The Porsche 918 that Mark Hales got into hot water over was a replica - it wasn't built by Porsche itself, but most of it was Porsche. Those Hawk Stratos cars you see could be considered replicas - they mostly use Alfa rather than Ferrari engines, but the rest of the car is so close to the original that owners of originals can repair their car with Hawk parts.
The last is the new-old car. This is like the aforementioned Model T, or like the car that BMW built from new-old stock parts a while back - the factory built what I seem to recall was a 2002 entirely from scratch using original, unused parts. It can realistically be called a genuine car, it just happens to be made a lot later than others of its ilk.
In fairness, the McLaren is none of these. It's just a very, very thorough repair of an existing car. It's no less valuable as a result, either - just like the priceless GT cars which get crashed every year at the Goodwood Revival are still worth countless millions after they've been rebuilt from the ground up.
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Which is almost certainly the case with James Glickenhaus' Ferrari P3/4, for that matter; except Ferrari did write it off. And no one cares that it burnt to the ground at Le Mans and got in a huge accident at the Targa Florio and was rebuilt from there both times because it is still the Ferrari P3/4 that won Daytona earlier that year and is thus one of the four cars that Ferrari used in sportscar racing in the late 60's.
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- 9,058
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- BasedAckbar
With the amount of money insurance companies make by scamming us monthly, I'm sure they'd rather fix an ultra rare car with an appreciation value than a run of the mill Honda Civic with a fart cannon on it.
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Why? I mean, maybe from a standpoint of principal, depending on the insurer, but it's not like they have any financial interest in the car itself.
McLaren
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There's only 64 of these cars out in the world. They will always be worth what the current market demands of them. The car is just as pristine as it was when it rolled off the factory line over a decade ago. McLaren wouldn't give it back to Rowan if they didn't believe it was as safe & dependable as it was new.
Not the same thing for starters. You're talking about producing brand new Ferrari 250s, not rebuilding them like McLaren does the F1. Not that it matters as quite a few 250s have been rebuilt by Ferrari.
You're also comparing 1 whole car to an entire lineup that not only had many different designs, but different history associated with each one. It's far too difficult to really gauge how a new 250 would do on the market because certain 250s rarely ever hit the used market, so a genuine, brand new one from Ferrari would probably still fetch $500,000-$1 million on rarity alone. It depends on what model we're talking about. A GTO would certainly fetch $1 million brand new from Ferrari if made exactly the same way all the others were.
Talking about the GTR race cars. Why would I even remotely be talking about a mass-produced sports car that's like a buying a Kia to McLaren F1 owners?
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- 900
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- Mick_C_1080
Reading this thread, for starters WOW on the repair costs!!
Secondly, is there (or isn't there) an issue with aging carbon fiber??
My source on this matter is very weak admittedly, some discussion on the web. It relates to a picture of a mid80's F1 car that had been in one of those classic racer series. It had crashed and the entire nose is off the car.
In the discussion about the picture someone said that the reason for the level of damage was that the carbon fiber was old and had decayed. {like I said, a weak source}
Giving this some thought as typing this . . I've already considered that it's probably way more likely that the car was from the early days of carbon fiber use in F1 and the techniques were still being worked out. So it was way more prone to coming apart with age.
So to sum up . . . ignore most of this post other than the first sentence.
Secondly, is there (or isn't there) an issue with aging carbon fiber??
My source on this matter is very weak admittedly, some discussion on the web. It relates to a picture of a mid80's F1 car that had been in one of those classic racer series. It had crashed and the entire nose is off the car.
In the discussion about the picture someone said that the reason for the level of damage was that the carbon fiber was old and had decayed. {like I said, a weak source}
Giving this some thought as typing this . . I've already considered that it's probably way more likely that the car was from the early days of carbon fiber use in F1 and the techniques were still being worked out. So it was way more prone to coming apart with age.
So to sum up . . . ignore most of this post other than the first sentence.
ND4SPD
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Reading this thread, for starters WOW on the repair costs!!
Secondly, is there (or isn't there) an issue with aging carbon fiber??
My source on this matter is very weak admittedly, some discussion on the web. It relates to a picture of a mid80's F1 car that had been in one of those classic racer series. It had crashed and the entire nose is off the car.
In the discussion about the picture someone said that the reason for the level of damage was that the carbon fiber was old and had decayed. {like I said, a weak source}
Giving this some thought as typing this . . I've already considered that it's probably way more likely that the car was from the early days of carbon fiber use in F1 and the techniques were still being worked out. So it was way more prone to coming apart with age.
So to sum up . . . ignore most of this post other than the first sentence.
Hmm that wasn't even a mid 80's F1 car. That was a Ferrari F399. Not sure if it was Irvine's or Schumi's. But ya, apparently it was a small impact and tore the whole front off and speculation the last time I heard was the aged carbon fibre but I have no idea what actually was the reason.
Seismica
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I've seen many stories about tha crash, some say botched repair, some say botched modifications made by Kroymands as he is rather tall and some even say it's the same chassis Schumacher crashed at Silverstone and that's how the botched repair came about. I'm not sure if the truth is out there.
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Cheers that is the picture.
Yeah I tried to do a google search to find the picture for my earlier post but couldn't find it.
Now that it's up and I can have another look, it really is a suspicious break/failure. For most of the break it's a straight line right where the bulkhead is. It even looks from the picture that the driver is looking at the damage thinking "What just happened???"
= botched repair/alteration theory looking strong.
Yeah I tried to do a google search to find the picture for my earlier post but couldn't find it.
Now that it's up and I can have another look, it really is a suspicious break/failure. For most of the break it's a straight line right where the bulkhead is. It even looks from the picture that the driver is looking at the damage thinking "What just happened???"
= botched repair/alteration theory looking strong.
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Since McLaren were the ones who did the repair, I trust that they would have done a good job, making it as safe as original.
--
Bonding and joining pieces of carbon fiber together is actually not that hard at all if given the right tools, environment (clean room, or clean enough place) and equipment and a correct understanding of the material. Carbon fiber with even a tiny crack or barely noticeable edge delamination can eventually be fatal to the lifespan of the material. Once inspection is completed on the structure to see which parts are damaged and which parts are still good, and the damaged cars cut out, McLaren will have to inspect the cut edge again to ensure that there weren't any delaminations from the cutting process. After which another piece can be reattached to recomplete the chassis. But once that is done, there should be minimal impact to the structural integrity of the chassis.
A repaired F1 shouldn't be any less safe than a brand new F1. Based on a quick image search of the carbon fiber chassis itself, I doubt the F1 was cured from the raw state as one piece, but rather it was cured in various pieces and then further co-bonded or co-cured to achieve the final chassis shape. The tooling needed to make that kind of shape with all those contours would be highly complex, even with carbon fiber technology at where it is now.
If aircraft manufacturers can repair carbon fiber safely on a machine that flies 7 miles above sea level at over 650 mph, I trust that a properly repaired F1 would be safe.
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I wonder if Pagani's Carbotanium will eventually be spread all over the world and in used in wider applications. I think they still have the patent to it, and supposedly it makes the carbon fiber incredibly durable.
Robin
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I thought I would put this in here,
He can hardly put 'one careful owner' in the advertisement, can he!
Daily Mail
With around 40 000 miles on the clock and two crashes to its name, Rowan Atkinson’s car hardly seemed likely to net a bumper profit.
But the comedian has sold his McLaren F1 for up to £8 million – having bought it in 1997 for £540 000. Despite being wrecked by its owner four years ago, the 388km/h sports car has proved a shrewd investment, in one of the UK’s biggest ever car transactions.
The F1 was put on the market earlier this year for £8 million. Although details of the sale remain secret, it is not believed to have been far short of the asking price.
David Clark, of car dealer Taylor & Crawley, said the F1 had gone to a British buyer, adding: “Rowan is pleased, but also maybe a bit sad as he did 40 000 miles in it.”
He can hardly put 'one careful owner' in the advertisement, can he!
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