I actually saw this thing during our PCH trip as we were coming into Los Angeles, parked in a lot off some freeway (the car is quite hard to miss.) That was a nice surprise. “IT’S THE FUCKING PUMA!” I screamed...

I feel your pain Doug - in my formative years up through High School my father owned a Corolla and three Camrys. Prior to the birth of my older brother he had owned a MGB GT and before that a Firebird 400 so I am not sure where it all went wrong?

Also not sure how I ever became a car enthusiast with such inspiring…

Little-known MBZ M-Class Fact - Porsche used them as the basis for their original Cayenne test mules. Long ago my friends and I found a handful of M-Class’s with Manufacturer plates in a hotel parking lot looking rather strange - not entirely disguised like most prototypes, just odd proportions and various bits tacked…

XP3 and XP4 are both road car prototype chassis numbers - nothing to do with the F1 LM

For the LMs there was only one prototype, known as XP1 LM. It was this car that Lewis could have earned had he stayed at McLaren and been quite successful.

Here he is caressing that which he coveted so greatly.

Sorry then - the Kinja format didn’t make it clear there were additional comments.

I saw some news video taken from the crash site as the car was hauled away. There was just one magnesium wheel left that allowed for identification of the car as a McLaren F1.

This is untrue - three people were killed in a fiery crash in a McLaren F1 in Essex back in 1999. Several articles on the subject still exist online:

Yeah - I was not light-footed at all. Actually thought 33MPG was still pretty decent considering I was operating well outside the performance envelope a Prius was designed for. Any of the other compacts I could have chosen would have likely done worse.

Mine felt pretty good - not at all sporty, mind you, but certainly not unstable. Road conditions were good. Kept it there about 20 seconds to make sure that was all it had.

For most of the ~600 mile drive I was doing I kept the cruise set at 88 MPH because I was hoping to see some serious shit. #backtothefuture

Final…

I rented one once as well. Screw their attempts at encouragement - this was VMAX. :D

LOL - I don’t know. :D

The high mirrors housing is borrowed from the BMW Z1 Roadster and is a bit more svelte so it might be slightly lighter than the larger VW mirror housing borrowed from the Corrado that the standard cars carry.

No worries - glad to help clear things up. :-)

The high mirrors require strengthening of the a-pillar section of the door frame to withstand the forces on the mirrors at high speed.

Not sure how you read that from what I wrote, but to my knowledge chassis 071 remains unaltered from its original configuration as pictured in your post, and also continues to be maintained in the hands of its first owner to this day.

Ralph has two nearly identical F1 road cars - chassis 055 and chassis 074. Both were upgraded with the high mirrors when a new set of doors was made for each car. He later acquired the F1 LM, chassis LM3, and it has retained the mirrors in the standard location.

There are five F1s that wear the high mounted mirrors. Chassis 040 was the first, then came 050 and finally 071 during their original production. The two remaining cars are 055 and 074, both of which belong to Ralph Lauren and are nearly identical silver road cars. Neither car was originally built with the high…

GTR 01R started the race without the lamps and then that panel was swapped in during the race as darkness fell. I posted an image in separate reply to Máté showing the car on the starting grid without them.

GTR 01R started the 1995 24 Hour race without the added cornering lamps and the panel which held them was swapped in before dark and remained there until the end of the race.

Here’s a photo of the car from the starting grid.

According to Wikipedia:

McLaren will simply change the indicator lens to amber at the front as they did on previous models.

In the late 1960s Bruce McLaren had initiated an M6 GT road car project and a couple of examples were built. The project was stunted by his death in 1970, but a number of knockoffs were produced later.