The unique one
Of course, we won’t go through the whole history of the McLaren F1 again here, we’ve already done that, in detail, here; there’s a collection there too. But the McLaren F1 with the chassis number 059 (to be exact: SA9AB5AC1V1048059) deserves a closer look, also because we have a lot of pictures of this car.
This F1 was delivered as the 97th car (one of the last) to the Englishman John Studholme in April 1998. It was not his first F1, he had already owned 017 and later bought a GTR, 14R. 059 was a special number, namely the starting number of the car that had won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1995.
And 059 is also a special F1 because it has very unusual front headlights, namely those of a BMW Z1. That’s how it came about: Soon after the presentation, Gordon Murray realised that although he had designed one of the greatest cars of all time, he had paid too little attention to the light. What front lights the F1s had fitted were more like this: candles. With 059 they tried to improve the car, they had good relations with BMW (the engine number of the Rosche V12 is 61121 6057 1283), so 059 looks a bit different from the front than the other F1s. During the first service, which was carried out at the factory in May 1998, Studholme had a high downforce kit and 18-inch wheels fitted. 18-inchers… – At that time, after just over a month on the road, the car already had 4676 miles on the clock.
Today it has a little more than 16,000 miles – since Studholme sold 059 in 2012, hardly anything has been added. This is also because the F1 was imported into the USA as a “show and display”, and is not actually allowed to be driven. The car will be offered at a so-called “sealed auction” by RM Sotheby’s between 18 and 20 August. We’re guessing: around 20 million.
The McLaren F1 belongs to our collections.
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