Rowan Atkinson’s rare McLaren F1 hit a tree and caught fire in August 2011, and the repair bill grew into a £910,000 insurance payout, listed as the largest in Britain.
Fifteen years later, the figure is doing the rounds again after a post on Reddit’s “today I learned” forum, and it still lands because of who was driving. The man behind Mr. Bean, the world’s most famous bumbling motorist, owned one of the rarest road cars ever built.
A £910,000 repair, not a write-off
The number that surprises people is what it paid for. The car was not scrapped. Specialists spent more than a year putting it back together, which is why the claim reached the size it did.
Atkinson reportedly lost control of the car before the impact.
It was also the second time this particular McLaren needed serious work. Back in October 1999 it had been in a collision with an Austin Metro in Cabus, Lancashire, near the town of Garstang.
Why the F1 costs what it costs
The McLaren F1 was never an ordinary supercar. Production ran from 1992 to 1998 and ended at 106 cars in total, racing versions and prototypes included. The driver sits dead center with a passenger set back on each side, and the engine bay is lined with gold foil, about 16 grams per car, to reflect heat.
In March 1998 a prototype hit 240.1 mph at Volkswagen’s Ehra-Lessien test track, then a world record for a production car. It is still listed as the fastest naturally aspirated production car.
That rarity explains the arithmetic of a crash. Cars with major structural damage can go straight back to McLaren for repair. Atkinson’s car, chassis 061, went back on the road and was sold in 2015 for $12.2 million. Another F1, chassis 014, sold at auction in 2025 for $25,317,500. Divide one by the other and the later sale comes out about 2.1 times higher, though they are different cars in different specifications.
A lifelong car obsessive
None of this was a celebrity impulse buy. A timeline of his motoring life runs from the sublime to the expensive:
- 1981: Earns a heavy goods vehicle license, partly because trucks fascinated him.
- 1997: Buys the McLaren F1, and keeps it for 18 years.
- 2001: Crashes an Aston Martin V8 Zagato at a club event at Croft, England, and walks away unhurt.
- July 2011: Sets a 1:42.2 lap on the “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” segment of Top Gear, topping the leaderboard.
- August 2011: The McLaren crash, one month later.
- 2015: Sells the car.
He has also raced a Renault 5 GT Turbo and appeared at the Goodwood Revival in a Jaguar Mark VII M. One marque he says he will never own is Porsche, explaining that “the typical Porsche people” are “not, I feel, my kind of people.”
His next appearance is far from a racetrack. Atkinson has announced Rowan Live, his first West End sketch show in 40 years, booked for 30 performances at London’s Gillian Lynne Theatre from February to March 2027.
Further reading
Illustrative image. Image: Bill Abbott, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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