McLaren built just 5 examples of the mighty F1 LM (and one prototype), which means your chances of buying one today are very, very slim. Even if you find one of those five cars available, you’ll probably have to spend several million dollars to have it. Or, alternatively, you can simply build one yourself. Yes, you read that right.
For the uninitiated, the F1 LM was a series of five special cars built in honor of the five McLaren F1 GTRs which finished the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans. Each car was a stripped-down version of the F1 with a generally more spartan cabin, different aerodynamics, no air conditioner, and no interior sound suppression. Visually, probably the biggest difference between the regular F1 and the F1 LM was the considerably larger CFRP rear wing of the latter as opposed to the former’s active wing.
As you would imagine, McLaren never published actual blueprints and diagrams of the F1 LM. Apparently, that doesn’t mean you can’t build one and Danie Brough from South Africa proves dreams do come true if you never stop pursuing them. Some 23 years ago, Brough started a project to build his own F1 LM replica and the car is finally ready to be driven.
Cars.co.za was invited to get behind the wheel of the Papaya Orange replica and they produced the video you see attached at the top. The creator explained he took all the proportions and dimensions from photos and from scale models.
“Everything you see on this car, I did it myself,” Brough explains in the video. “I didn’t make the engine. I even fabricated a flywheel.” And the engine in question is a BMW-sourced twin-turbo V12 mated to a six-speed manual gearbox from Audi. “It was years and years worth of research. Many years looking at pictures trying to get the dimensions, buying little model cars, scaling them up.”
