The difference was in the detail with the McLaren F1 | Frankel’s Insight
Andrew Frankel
I said it more than 30 years ago and I believe it as much today as I did then: no car ever pushed back further the limitations of what was possible within the world of road car design than the McLaren F1. And the reason for that was that there was no single reason.
If, for instance, Gordon Murray and McLaren had set out simply to design a car with the most powerful road car engine, it would never have come close to achieving what it went on to do. Yes, it did have the most powerful engine yet seen in a production road car, but that was almost incidental.
What made the F1 different to everything else we had seen up until that time was the attention lavished on every aspect of its design, not just one or two. To make this point, a comparison with the fastest pre-F1 road car is instructive.
That was the Jaguar XJ220 and when I tested it in the summer of 1992 it was a very clear step up from traditional fast cars like the Lamborghini Diablo and Ferrari 512TR. But compared to the F1? It was nowhere. With 635PS (467kW) the McLaren had 86PS (63kW) more than the Jaguar, but at 1138kg it was more than 300kg lighter. Which was the difference in power to weight ratio of 377PS (277kW) per tonne for the XJ220 and 558PS (410kW) per tonne for the F1. In performance terms it was playing a completely different game.
But that was barely the start of it because, despite having to package a 6.1-litre engine with twelve cylinders instead of just 3.5 litres and six cylinders for the Jaguar, the McLaren was 642mm – almost two thirds of a metre – shorter. Yet it was the F1 that had the longer wheelbase.
More extraordinary still was the fact that the McLaren was 400mm narrower and very slightly lower too, yet provided room inside for 50 per cent more people and space for their luggage, of which the XJ220 had essentially none. The F1 was so compact it cast the same shadow as a Porsche 911, in an era when 911s were a slight smaller than they are today.
Then there was the obsession with the details, most clearly seen in the materials used for its construction. Carbon fibre for its body and tub, the first production road car to use the material so extensively (unless you count the 27 street versions of the Jaguar XJR-15); titanium not just for its pedals but its Facom toolkit too; magnesium for the wheels and, famously, gold lining the engine for its heat reflection properties.
The exhausts were made from a material called Inconel which was a specially heat resistant grade of stainless steel which meant thinner and lighter pipework could be used. Kenwood, who supplied the music system, was tasked with creating a CD player weighing literally half one of their normal units with no loss of sound quality. Every nut and bolt was to aerospace standard. Even the door hinges were Rose-jointed.
And yet perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is how extraordinarily civilised the F1 still turned out to be. It is well known that Gordon Murray never intended it to be a racing car and, for all its outlandish performance, you know it from the moment you trickle away from rest.
The ride quality is astonishingly good, limo-like compared to most modern hypercars, and on part throttle the engine is actually quite quiet. Visibility all round is exceptional thanks to that central driving position and vast glass house and the engine so tractable it’ll potter about in rush hour traffic for as long as you like.
And that was the point. An XJ220 or Bugatti EB110 were very exciting cars on those rare occasions you found yourself in precisely the right environment – a very long, wide, open and deserted road. And we all know those don’t exactly lurk around every corner. But in everyday traffic or, worse, in town they quickly became nightmares, such was their size and lack of visibility.
I well remember getting to an angled T-junction in an EB110 Supersport and having to actually get out of the car to see if anything was coming. And then there was the fact that, when the time, came the McLaren F1 would reduce any Lambo, Ferrari, Jaguar or Bugatti made up until that time to a very small dot in the mirror in a matter of seconds.
It was never quite my favourite road car because I found the Ferrari F40 more viscerally exciting and controllable on the limit but that doesn’t change how I feel about the F1 at all. It represented the single greatest advance in its art there has ever been. Some have gone faster since but none, in my view, has been smarter or more clearly conceived.
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