for: McLaren

The McLaren F1 is a rare and exclusive sports car designed and manufactured by Gordon Murray and McLaren Automotive. On March 31, 1998, it set the record for the fastest production car in the world, 240.1 mph (386.7 km/h).McLaren Automotive official website from McLaren. As of April 2009, the F1 is succeeded by three faster cars in sheer top speed, but is still the fastest naturally aspirated production car.

The car features numerous proprietary designs and technologies, it is lighter as well as having a more streamlined structure than even most of its modern rivals and competitors; it features a powerful engine, it is somewhat track oriented but not to the degree it compromises everyday usability and comfort -- it was conceived as an exercise in creating what its designers hoped would be considered the ultimate road car. Production began in 1992 and ended in 1998, in all 106 cars were manufactured with some variations in the design thereof.McLaren Automotive - Production from mclarenautomotive.com

In 1994, AutoCar stated in a road test regarding the F1, "The McLaren F1 is the finest driving machine yet built for the public road." and that "The F1 will be remembered as one of the great events in the history of the car, and it may possibly be the fastest production road car the world will ever see.".

Specifications

Chief engineer Gordon Murray's design concept was a common one among designers of high-performance cars: low weight and high power. This was achieved through use of high-tech and expensive materials like carbon fibre, titanium, gold, magnesium and kevlar. The F1 was one of the first production cars to use a carbon-fibre monocoque.

Quote from Gordon: "During this time, we were able to visit with Ayrton Senna (the late F1 Champion) and Honda's Tochigi Research Center. The visit related to the fact that at the time, McLaren's F1 Grand Prix cars were using Honda engines. Although it's true I had thought it would have been better to put a larger engine, the moment I drove the Honda NSX, all the benchmark cars—Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini—I had been using as references in the development of my car vanished from my mind. Of course the car we would create, the McLaren F1, needed to be faster than the NSX, but the NSX's ride quality and handling would become our new design target. Being a fan of Honda engines, I later went to Honda's Tochigi Research Center on two occasions and requested that they consider building for the McLaren F1 a 4.5 liter V10 or V12. I asked, I tried to persuade them, but in the end could not convince them to do it, and the McLaren F1 ended up equipped with a BMW engine."