Back in January, we brought you the news that Actor Rowan Atkinson, the man behind Mr. Bean, was selling his prized McLaren F1. The twice-crashed 1997 supercar had been listed for a price of $12 Million, much to the scoffs and tuts of commenters the world over.
The Telegraph reports that Mr. Atkinson has finally sold his McLaren, and he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Although the final sale price wasn’t disclosed, David Clark, head of the specialist car dealer Taylor and Crawley, did release a few details. “It is one of the biggest ever deals in the UK. Rowan is pleased, but also maybe a bit sad as he did 40,000 miles in it.”
Clark has an interesting history with the car as well. As the former sales and marketing director at McLaren, he was the one who originally sold Atkinson the car for roughly $810,000. Since then, Atkinson’s fondness for driving the car and putting a surprising amount of miles on it has been well documented.
Also well known is that his enthusiasm for taking the McLaren around has led to it being wrecked twice in high-profile incidents. The more serious incident was the one in 2011, when the car was just about split in two. McLaren estimated the repairs at nearly twice its original purchase price, resulting in one of the biggest auto insurance claims ever.
McLaren Special Operations practically rebuilt the car, including repairs to the 6.1-liter naturally aspirated V12 that gives the legendary vehicle 627 horsepower. As one of the purest old-school supercars, power is sent to the rear by way of a manual gearbox.
A fellow, anonymous Briton was the ultimate purchaser of the car, and who, according to Clark, will give it the same fond attention as Atkinson did. We hope so too. 12 million dollars or not, a supercar like that shouldn’t sit unused in the garage.
