IN THIS FEATURE Tourist attraction Price debate A little piece of history

A couple of miles from the stunning new McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England - where McLaren is ramping up SLR production in anticipation of the first spring deliveries - sits a piece of automotive history. Eleven years since the first F1 was made and five years since creation of the 64th and final road-going version, McLaren Cars is offering one last unregistered example of the world's fastest road car for a record-breaking £1m. Apart for a couple of rare auction highlights, no other new production car has commanded so high an asking price.

For half a decade chassis number 65 (McLaren employs a strange numbering system) has been window-dressing in McLaren's flagship showroom on London's Park Lane. Millions of tourists gawped at the silver dream machine as their open-top buses pulled up outside. But in late 2003, McLaren replaced chassis 65 with XP5, the record-breaking version which achieved 240.1mph on March 31, 1998 and which, incidentally, was once driven by 4CAR's editor Gavin Conway.

F1 in Park Lane showroom

"It's like something frozen in time. A brand-new F1 put in an ice block if you like," says McLaren Cars' Head of Customer Care, Harold Dermott. "Although we have to be careful how we use that 'new' because it is clearly 5 years old; but here is an F1 with delivery mileage only, never been registered, never been sold by McLaren." Delivery mileage for a McLaren F1 is about 130-200 miles, by the way. Each example is exercised at a proving ground before hand-over.