10:09 am, November 6, 2012
THE record for most expensive modern car ever sold has been broken by a British dealer.
A McLaren F1 was the prized item, selling for an amount in ‘excess of £3.5 million’ – three times the price of a brand new Bugatti Veyron. Hartley’s model – the GTR – was originally destined for motorsport, with only 28 models reaching production.
Some of these – such as this example – were transformed into stripped-out road-going models, attracting far higher price tags than the ‘normal’ F1.
Tom Hartley Jr, of the Tom Hartley supercar dealership in Derbyshire, sold the multi-million-pound car for its record-breaking sum – but didn’t seem unduly surprised.
‘I think the McLaren F1 is the best car ever built,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘It was light-years ahead of its rivals and the model that I have sold is undoubtedly one of the best of the road-going F1s ever built.
‘It has an unblemished history, has never been crashed and has been maintained regardless of cost. When you compare it to the Bugatti Veyron, you appreciate the Veyron’s technology but the F1 is much rarer and for its time was so advanced.’
While a number of Ferrari, Bentley and Rolls Royce models have all gone for similar or higher sums, this is the first time a car so new has gone under the hammer for an amount.
Part of this might be down to McLaren’s reported resilience to letting the models out of its sight.
‘It is very unusual for an F1 to be sold outside of the McLaren network. McLaren tries to keep a monopoly over its cars so they were a bit annoyed when one managed to slip through their fingers,’ said Hartley.
‘There was no shortage of interest from around the world and I was thinking about holding onto it but decided to sell it and it went very quickly.’
