En eens gepolst naar het misterie rond die 5 LM's en vooral de kleur...
Heerlijk interessant imo.
Until the HDF Kit was removed from #069 there were a total of 10 McLaren F1 road cars that I am aware of which have had it fitted. Chassis numbers of the ones that are known are #011, #014, #018, #020, #023, #059, #072, #073. There is one additional silver car that is not yet determined.
A change to the suspension and fitting of the OZ wheels are typically part of the package but since there is an exception to every rule, chassis #023 has a narrower front splitter, lacks the extensions to the front wheel arches and retains the original 17" wheels. Here's a photo of that car:
More images of it are in this Flickr Gallery.
On the subject of the LMs, McLaren built a total of 5 production LMs and one prototype. The prototype is XP1 LM and remains with the factory. Some will recall that Lewis Hamilton has made a deal with Ron Dennis to be given that car should he win two more F1 World Championships for McLaren.
There are two production LMs that are not in Brunei. They are LM2 which is in a museum in Nagoya, Japan and LM3 which has been in the collection of fashion designer Ralph Lauren since late 2004. Both of these cars are painted the traditional Papaya Orange.
Brunei purchased the other three F1 LMs and requested that two of them be painted in a similar style to the GTR that one Le Mans - black/grey - and then had some odd looking bunting-style graphics added to the nose and sides of the car. The chassis numbers for those cars are LM1 and LM4, with LM5 being their final one in the traditional orange paint.
For the longest time these so called "Black LM's" were just a rumor as no photographic proof of their existence was available. I had several good sources who had confirmed they were built, all with basically the same visual description, but some people still refused to believe it without solid proof.
In October of 2005, a contact sent me a link to the website of Italian artist Maurizio Corbi noting that I'd find a drawing there depicting one of the Black LMs. Sure enough, when I contacted Maurizio he informed me that he had done the drawing of this very special F1 in 1996 while working for Pininfarina in Brunei. While not a photograph - his confirmation that the drawing depicted a real car in the Brunei collection was the final piece of evidence that I'd been looking for.
In July of 2008, someone finally stumbled on photographic proof that had been right under our noses (essentially) since July 17th 1996. It was in an issue of Autoweek magazine where they did an article on the McLaren - and pictured right in the middle of a page was a real photo of LM1 being assembled at the factory. I have a feeling that McLaren would have probably preferred that image never went to print, and that may be one of the reasons why they now require editorial review in advance of printing anything shot inside the factory. I didn't own a copy of the magazine myself, but the guy who finally produced the scan of the page had owned it since the date it was printed and had just never gone back to look through it until that point.
It wasn't long after that, a user from PistonHeads was going through his old photo collection and shared images from the McLaren factory taken in 1996. In his set of photos were two more images of a black LM completed and ready for delivery to Brunei.
A change to the suspension and fitting of the OZ wheels are typically part of the package but since there is an exception to every rule, chassis #023 has a narrower front splitter, lacks the extensions to the front wheel arches and retains the original 17" wheels. Here's a photo of that car:
More images of it are in this Flickr Gallery.
On the subject of the LMs, McLaren built a total of 5 production LMs and one prototype. The prototype is XP1 LM and remains with the factory. Some will recall that Lewis Hamilton has made a deal with Ron Dennis to be given that car should he win two more F1 World Championships for McLaren.
There are two production LMs that are not in Brunei. They are LM2 which is in a museum in Nagoya, Japan and LM3 which has been in the collection of fashion designer Ralph Lauren since late 2004. Both of these cars are painted the traditional Papaya Orange.
Brunei purchased the other three F1 LMs and requested that two of them be painted in a similar style to the GTR that one Le Mans - black/grey - and then had some odd looking bunting-style graphics added to the nose and sides of the car. The chassis numbers for those cars are LM1 and LM4, with LM5 being their final one in the traditional orange paint.
For the longest time these so called "Black LM's" were just a rumor as no photographic proof of their existence was available. I had several good sources who had confirmed they were built, all with basically the same visual description, but some people still refused to believe it without solid proof.
In October of 2005, a contact sent me a link to the website of Italian artist Maurizio Corbi noting that I'd find a drawing there depicting one of the Black LMs. Sure enough, when I contacted Maurizio he informed me that he had done the drawing of this very special F1 in 1996 while working for Pininfarina in Brunei. While not a photograph - his confirmation that the drawing depicted a real car in the Brunei collection was the final piece of evidence that I'd been looking for.
In July of 2008, someone finally stumbled on photographic proof that had been right under our noses (essentially) since July 17th 1996. It was in an issue of Autoweek magazine where they did an article on the McLaren - and pictured right in the middle of a page was a real photo of LM1 being assembled at the factory. I have a feeling that McLaren would have probably preferred that image never went to print, and that may be one of the reasons why they now require editorial review in advance of printing anything shot inside the factory. I didn't own a copy of the magazine myself, but the guy who finally produced the scan of the page had owned it since the date it was printed and had just never gone back to look through it until that point.
It wasn't long after that, a user from PistonHeads was going through his old photo collection and shared images from the McLaren factory taken in 1996. In his set of photos were two more images of a black LM completed and ready for delivery to Brunei.
Heerlijk interessant imo.
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