The McLaren F1 was the only road car designed with no compromises. Nobody to answer to, no cost limits, just Gordon Murray's vision of building the purest road car ever made. Murray conceived the idea on a flight home from the 1988 Italian Grand Prix, and the brief was simple: go all out. They spent over five years working on the car, and only 106 were ever made.

What is remarkable is that in the 1990s, this was the car that set the standard for today. The carbon fiber monocoque tub was unheard of in a production car, as most cars of the era were built from fiberglass or aluminum. That construction is now standard on cars from Pagani, McLaren, and even the Alfa Romeo 4C, but the F1 was the first production car to do it. The central driving position, with the driver seated in the middle and two passengers behind, was equally radical. Gordon Murray revisited the concept decades later with the Gordon Murray T.50, and it still stands as one of the most distinctive cockpit designs in automotive history. The engine bay was lined with gold foil, the same material used on spacecraft, to reflect heat away from the V12. Roger Bell, writing for Car Magazine in 1994, drove the car with no minder and no demonstration lap and described how it humbled icons like the Ferrari F40, the Porsche 959, and the Jaguar XJ220, reaching 100 mph in under eight seconds. (1) The top speed record of 391 km/h set in 1998 stood for over a decade before the Bugatti Veyron took it.

(1) Bell, Roger. "McLaren F1 Review: Our Original 1994 Road Test." Car Magazine, June 1994.