Remember the P1 that set a 'sub-seven-minute' lap around the Nurburgring? It's looking for a new owner. There’s something utterly fascinating about a McLaren test car. Not least because my old university was a stone’s throw from Woking and my student flat was along one of the company’s test routes, so I’d often see (and hear) the firm’s latest models long before their public reveals.
But there was always an extra layer of mystique thanks to McLaren penchant for occasionally adorning its prototypes with its very own ‘XP’ codename. A small touch, but enough to give a simple test mule its own character and backstory. Take the old McLaren F1 prototypes, for instance. Gordon Murray chose a pair of Ultima Mk3s to aid development of the F1, with one car (dubbed Albert) fitted with a 7.4-litre Chevy V8 to test the gearbox and the second (called Edward) serving as the test bed for the BMW S70/2 V1