This 254-mile McLaren F1 is coming up for auction (again), yours for $20m+

Over the last three years, this very fast, very rare and very brown McLaren F1 built in 1995 has been driven a total of… 12 miles. As of 2024, its odometer shows 410km – that’s 254 miles – making it a time capsule. Or time machine, considering it’s capable of 240mph.

We first saw this exact car back in 2021, where it was sold at Gooding & Co’s auction for a whopping $20,465,000 bearing just under 390km (242 miles) on its clock. Now it’s come back up for air via RM Sotheby’s, who plans on selling it via private auction in May. Fair to say it’s lived a privileged life, averaging four miles per year since 2021.

You’ll know everything there is to know about the McLaren F1: 6.1-litre BMW V12, 627bhp, six-speed manual, rear-wheel-drive, 240.1mph, Gordon Murray (who ‘fixed’ the issues he had with this car in the outrageously good T.50), Le Mans winner (in motorsport trim), bona-fide Nineties legend. Etc etc.

It’s the only brown – ‘Creighton Brown’ – F1 of the 106 McLaren built across all iterations, features a light tan/brown interior, and comes equipped with custom-fitted luggage matched to the interior, a tool chest and tool roll, and a one-off TAG watch inscribed with the car’s chassis number (029).

“Priced at nearly one million dollars, it was the most expensive car ever offered for sale at the time,” said Shelby Myers, RM Sotheby’s head of private sales. “Despite this, true enthusiasts could easily justify its eye-watering price tag considering the innovations and technologies it utilised by Gordon Murray in his uncompromising pursuit of creating the greatest driver’s car of all time.”

It comes with yet another eye-watering price tag, because RM Sotheby’s reckons it’ll sell for well over $20m when the sealed bid auction begins on 13 May.

Photography: RM Sotheby's