Treasure Trove of 20 McLaren Road Cars s Is for Sale, Most of Them Orange

Car and Driver

a day ago

The personal road car collection of Mansour Ojjeh, longtime McLaren racing team sponsor, is up for auction.
There are 20 cars, each of them the last of its line.
The collection includes the last McLaren F1 ever built and could go for a record sum.
There are car collections, and there are car collections, and the 20 cars currently coming up for auction at Tom Hartley Jnr is emphatically the latter. Let's start with the headliner: the last McLaren F1 ever made, showing just 1100 miles on its odometer. The F1 was McLaren's first road car, and the 20 supercars listed here are basically a snapshot of the brand's roadgoing legacy since, almost all of them finished in a deep metallic orange called Mansour Orange.
Tom Hartley Jnr
Tom Hartley Jnr
You don't get your hands on the last ever F1 even if you're a longtime McLaren fan and owner, and this collection formerly belonged to a man central to the McLaren story. The late Mansour Ojjeh, part-owner of the TAG motorsports and aviation group, joined F1 as a sponsor of the Willams team in 1979. He later moved into ownership of McLaren during the mid-1980s, and he was there for the development of the TAG-Porsche racing engines, which brought early success to the team. Ojjeh was with McLaren for the next 40 years, including being part of the fateful moment, along with Ron Dennis and Gordon Murray, when the idea of the F1 was born.
Tom Hartley Jnr
Tom Hartley Jnr
Ojjeh had other blue-chip cars in his collection at the time, specifically some of Ferrari's best, but as McLaren got going he started to create an all-McLaren lineup. This is that collection, featuring special editions and Le Mans series cars, including a Senna GTR, Speedtail, and Elva. All except for the P1 GTR and the F1 are completely undriven, each one the last chassis built of that particular model.
Tom Hartley Jnr
Tom Hartley Jnr
Tom Hartley Jnr
Tom Hartley Jnr
It's an interesting way to create a collection, making sure you have the best and last variant made. Since all but two are basically brand new—and those two are museum quality—it's a fantastic opportunity for someone to acquire a collection dedicated to pure McLaren enthusiasm. With the team's F1 team doing so well in this year's championship, the timing is right too.
Carefully curated by someone who was in the front seat for McLaren's transformation from racing team to full-scale supercar manufacturer, this collection is sure to fetch the tippiest-top dollar out there. They don't come any more significant than this.
Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. Read full bio