One to Buy: ex-Larry Ellison 1997 McLaren F1
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When the McLaren management team of Ron Dennis, Mansour Ojjeh, Creighton Brown and Gordon Murray decided to forge ahead with their plan to construct the ultimate road car of its era, the market for high end collectable motor cars was beginning to really heat up. However, by the early 1990s most major economies were in a tailspin and when F1 production got underway in late 1993, buyers who could muster $1m for a toy had all but disappeared.
As a consequence, McLaren never got close to hitting their 300 production car target and only 64 units were ultimately completed between 1993 and 1998.
Today, this means that as arguably the greatest piece of road car engineering ever, a ‘no-stories’ F1 has become a highly prized asset worth north of $20m. Set to go under the hammer with RM Sotheby’s as part of a sealed bid process between August 13th and 16th is one such car: chassis 062.
One of seven F1s exported to the US and Federalised by Ameritech, chassis 062 was sold new to Larry Ellison, the founder and head of database software company, Oracle Corporation.
Following its delivery in August 1997, Ellison retained the Magnesium Silver car (registered ‘ORACLE8’) for a little under a decade. The second owner acquired chassis 062 via Ferrari Maserati of Silicon Valley in 2005 at which point it was showing around 2600 miles.
The McLaren’s third owner who, like the first two custodians hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, has taken the mileage up to a little under 6500. In 2024, the car was serviced by McLaren Philadelphia (the only factory-approved F1 service centre outside of McLaren Special Operations in Woking). At the same time, McLaren Philadelphia also carried out a comprehensive air con, radiator, exhaust and fuel tank update.
