Rowan Atkinson’s Spent £910k To Repair His McLaren, Now that’s a true petrolhead who likes his car and not just car a rare collectible McLaren F1.
We like Rowan Atkinson here at Top Gear. Not only because – despite his protestations about his driving ability – he remains the second-fastest celebrity to have lapped our little track, but also because he’s a massive car nut. He owns a purple McLaren F1, for goodness sake.
And regular readers of The Internet will recall the Mr. Bean star’s well-documented accident in that lovely McLaren F1 a couple of years back, where, driving home on a rainy night, he accidentally hit a tree.
Thankfully, Rowan escaped with a minor shoulder injury, but the car was a wreck. Well, almost. Turns out it wasn’t a write-off, but a ruddy expensive fix. Speaking to Classic and Sports Car magazine, Atkinson revealed McLaren’s Special Operations division (them responsible for the bonkers X-1 concept) took four weeks to estimate how much it would cost to repair the injured F1. £910,000, exactly.
But because modern McLaren F1s today still fetch well into the millions – like this one that sold for £3.5m – it was deemed a repair job, and so the insurance company paid out to fix his beloved motor. Meaning this is the most expensive insurance payout ever recorded in Britain. WOW!