great vanity plate, I dig it! Thank you Jim!

 

coming to the Pebble Beach concours this August, a pair of hand built 69 McLaren M6B GT Coupe and 71 McLaren M8E, built by Randy Grubb (Blastolene Brother) shown here at the 2025 Portland Roadster Show

Skip the first two minutes, get to the car and info about it

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=23971886295749147&set=p.23971886295749147

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1297329395234147&set=pcb.1165774351906801

https://www.instagram.com/p/DHNLlH-xV8v

a really good car, a rare expensive one, can be crashed over and over, and become more valuable regardless of the mileage, decades, and repairs. But it's probably only happened to a couple of makes and models ever

in 1997 Rowan Atkinson, actor best known as Mr Bean, bout a McLaren, and in 17 years, Atkinson put more than 41,000 miles on the car, something almost unheard of for a vehicle of that caliber. 

He trusted it on real roads, in real weather, living with it instead of preserving it. Then in Oct 99, he had a minor crash on wet roads, and it was repaired. 

Then on August 4, 2011, Atkinson lost control of the McLaren. The car spun, struck a tree, and caught fire. Flames lit up the roadside. Emergency crews arrived quickly. Atkinson was pulled to safety with injuries that, while serious, were not life-ending. The car, however, was devastated.

The car was originally a 700k dollar purchase, and the repairs this time were 2.1 million 

Specialists worked carefully, piece by piece, restoring a machine many believed was beyond saving.

Despite two major crashes and extensive repairs, the car’s value rose.

By 2015, the market for rare McLaren once bought for 680,000 dollars, had become 12.2 million dollars.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122209746194352428&set=pcb.122209746230352428

And it wasn't a frivolous purchase by a bored celeb, it was a purchase by an amateur racer, who takes a Jag to Goodwood,

owned and raced this Falcon too, until selling it in 2006

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search?q=Rowan+Atkinson

intriguing comparison

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1241217897371973&set=a.759929682167466

A businessman living on the 57th floor decided to put his McLaren Senna GTR into his luxury Melbourne penthouse, the most expensive in Melbourne... it can't be used on public streets, so it's nothing more than a racecar for track or museum... or home décor (like the Ferrari in Tower Heist)

https://www.forbes.com.au/life/cars/melbourne-millionaire-cranes-mclaren-into-57th-floor-penthouse/

he paid 40 mil for the penthouse.... that's simply going to require some impressive interior decorating design elements to make it feel like it's the best in the city

This guy, is Adrian Portelli, he founded a company in 2018 that does the software for luxury car purchases, and signed up over 400 car selling businesses 

Adrian started his car-career in Hollywood, with a chauffeur business, but he's Australian, and now is branching out into real estate flipping

https://melbournemystyle.com/2021/06/15/adrian-portelli-founder-of-lmct-is-responsible-for-the-worlds-biggest-car-giveaway-the-1-million-hsv-gtsr-w1-maloo-ute-with-a-percentage-of-profits-going-to-chronically-ill-and-disabled-c/

https://lmctplus.com/about/

https://wealthypeeps.com/adrian-portelli-wikipedia-who-is-he-family/

https://www.thedrive.com/news/watch-a-mclaren-senna-gtr-get-craned-into-a-57th-floor-penthouse

eye catching

 

McLaren CEO sold the watches he won on a game show to buy his first car

https://journal.classiccars.com/2021/11/28/mclaren-racing-leader-shares-career-building-ideas/

Doug said it best, it's money, not a Mopar (reason I posted the hurricane damaged Super Bird, and not this McLaren)

Doug sent me the link to the owners Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/lambo9286/

I didn't know that U2 planes went to airshows and performed touch and gos! It's been happening at Miramar for years, but this is the 1st I've heard of it

 the chaser/spotter car is a McLaren 720S 

The U-2 made three passes at the runway at Miramar, with one pass featuring the short touch and go.

https://theaviationist.com/2022/09/27/dragon-lady-touch-and-go-miramar/

Hennessey Venom F5 Roadster, a McLaren with extra everything

 

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/motoring/hennessey-venom-f5-roadster-worlds-fastest-and-most-powerful/

https://www.snaptaste.com/venom-f5-roadster/

Washington State Patrol troopers found an empty, totaled McLaren tucked under a guardrail near Tacoma. Abandoned. (thank you Don!)

The car hasn’t been reported stolen, and its registered owner lives in Washington.

https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2022/06/driver-crashes-200k-mclaren-into-guardrail-in-washington-then-ditches-sports-car.html

https://twitter.com/wspd1pio/status/1539137915829497857

sweet McLaren

 

A McLaren 600lt went off on the Dragon at Deals Gap, and the tree that stopped it from sliding down into the canyon didn't budge

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatLookedExpensive/

must have ruined someone's day, peobably on a Monday morning

 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/can-we-please-stop-hotlinking-pics/20411/page3958/

nice cover photo, well done

bad lighting when I took the photo made the colors a bit off. 

Jim Adams taking some kids without helmets for a Victory Lap in a McLaren

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/vintage-shots-from-days-gone-by.428585/page-5958#post-12897219

Miami pop star graffiti artist, takes a car, and makes a statement about wealth. Irony, or am I wrong?

a McLaren customized by Miami-based 1016 Industries, with the company’s $65,000 carbon fiber bodywork and race hood, side skirts, lower front lip, mirror caps, rear wing and rear diffuser.

Then it was handed to artist Alec Monopoly, whose spraypaints involving cultural icons like the Monopoly man and Richie Rich went viral in 2008

https://drivetribe.com/p/is-this-the-most-ludicrous-paintjob-cfZZoN1BQRyZa68ppGi8Ww?iid=LoDwcqS_Sba0fut2vRa9rA

doesn't anyone have the brains god gave a goose, to not make a flood zone a parking lot for dealership cars?

Or the sense to haul the dealership floor jack out to the cars and lift the out of the water, stuffing some old tires under them? Unless you've got plenty of something else soft and bulky that will fit under the space a floor jack creates, to toss under the tires... and I can't think of anything a dealership has more of that is disposable...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatLookedExpensive/comments/d6ldqu/mclaren_dealership/

Bruce McLaren with McLaren Formula 2 wheels

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2836337986440568&set=g.674239962722623&type=1&theater&ifg=1

in 1973 the manager for Led Zeppelin met with the owner of a Can Am McLaren M8, in the Playboy Club of London, and signed a deal to sponsor the car, painted in album cover art for the 1974 season

That Zeppelin would sponsor a race car won't seem as odd if you recall that the drummer raced an AA Fuel dragster at Santa Pod.

Grant invited Led Zeppelin to attend a cocktail party at the Playboy Club in London, where they were to meet a racecar driver named Kaye Griffiths. A Brit who campaigned in the Interserie, Europe’s version of Can-Am (the unlimited engine-displacement series that fielded history’s most powerful racecars), Griffiths had recently purchased a used McLaren M8E that was factory-converted to M8D-style bodywork. His would-be manager and friend, a photographer named Zelma Wilkins, was actively seeking a rock-band sponsorship to put Griffiths on the map. While on their way to a race at Hockenheim, Germany, in September, she and Griffiths took a meeting with the Rolling Stones. In the end, though, Grant—always looking for unique ways to market Led Zeppelin—was the interested taker. John Bonham, the drummer for Led Zeppelin sponsored this car.

By late 1973 Griffiths’ McLaren was in a paint shop in London receiving a custom design from Richard Evans, a designer from Hipgnosis, the art firm that created countless classic-era album covers, including several for Pink Floyd. The project was the perfect cap to what proved to be a banner year for the company, which also saw the release of Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, both featuring Hipgnosis cover art.

In January 1974 Griffiths’ McLaren began a string of top finishes. Kaye won the March 1974 Silverstone Sports GT and Formula Libre races and was runner up at the April 1974 Silverstone Formula Libre race. After a spin during the May 1974 Martini International Trophy Supersports event at Silverstone, he went on to finish second in the May 1974 Silverstone Formula Libre race and move into the lead of the Haybrand Racewear Formula Libre championship points.



https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitaraficionado/led-zeppelins-mclaren-racecar-an-untold-story-from-rock-history
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/bonzos-big-banger-led-zeppelin-mclaren
https://www.conceptcarz.com/profile/3800,15079/1971-mclaren-m8e/d.aspx