McLaren F1 Service Centre opens in US

More than 20 years since the McLaren F1 arrived as probably the greatest supercar ever, McLaren opens a dedicated service centre in the USA.

It’s more than 20 years since the Gordon Murray designed McLaren F1 arrived like a supercar from the future, with its immense BMW-powered performance, stunning looks, carbon fibre chassis and unique three-seat layout.

It’s hard to believe now, but McLaren actually struggled to sell the F1, and the limited number – just 106 in total and 64 original road cars – wasn’t to keep the F1 rare and desirable but because McLaren couldn’t shift the £650,000 supercar.

In fact, it’s believed the last production F1 unsold went to North America with a hefty 30 per cent plus discount from list which, if the owner still had it (he doesn’t), would now return £10 million plus.

But despite the length of time since the F1 arrived, and its very limited numbers, McLaren has now opened a new F1 Service Centre in Pennsylvania, dedicated to caring for the 20 plus F1s residing in North America.

Servicing of the F1 isn’t cheap, and every service needs almost a strip-down and track time, never mind regular replacement of tyres and fuel tanks – so a US center takes away the need to ship the car to Woking on a regular basis and should make F1 servicing in the US quicker, easier and (a bit) cheaper.

Tony Joseph, McLaren’s US President, said:

The key to servicing and maintaining a McLaren F1 correctly is allowing adequate time for the technician to meticulously check every nut and bolt—servicing an F1 is not a quick process.
For North American owners, when you add up the time the actual service takes, with transport time to and from the U.K. – it equals a lot of time away from their vehicle. Having a service center in North America will allow us to drastically cut back on transport time and gives us an authorized facility that prioritizes North American F1s and owners.

Th new F1 Service Centre is located in a remote location in Pennsylvania – operated by McLaren Philadelphia – for discretion and privacy, and has McLaren trained F1 specialists on hand, as well as all the original tools required to service the F1.

The headline act for the new McLaren Service Centre is the F1, but the MOS technicians can also care for and restore other heritage McLarens like the SLR and P1.