McLaren F1 1992-1998 engines & performance

Threading your way through town, the F1 seems almost sedate. Behind you the V12 whirrs softly to itself, you adapt to the central driving position without thinking about it and, thanks to the F1 being no wider than a Toyota Supra, gaps are easy to negotiate. Once you reach the city limits, slot the lever into sixth and you could spend hours wandering around the lanes at 60mph and 2000rpm. But this is not what the F1 is for. 

We used two proving grounds for this test: first there was our usual visit to Millbrook in Bedfordshire to exploit the superb grippy surface that all our test cars enjoy, then we left for the Bruntingthorpe test track in Leicestershire with its two-mile runway to record the performance figures that, of all production cars in the history of the motor car, only the F1 could produce. 

Starting a world record breaking acceleration run in an F1 is easier than you’d think. There are cars with considerably less than half the F1’s power that will prove trickier. Because the engine has no turbos, just good old fashioned cubic capacity with an icing of high-tech variable valve timing, instant and reliable torque is available everywhere. You just call up about 2500rpm on the large, central rev counter and gently feed in the clutch.

If you get it right, your brain will be too preoccupied with keeping the rear tyres on the edge of wheelspin and the bark coming through the rear bulkhead to appreciate just how fast you are travelling. You’ll need to be quick with the six-speed gearbox to hook second before the engine slams into its 7500rpm limiter. But even before your left foot touches the clutch, you’ll be doing more than 60mph, just 3.2sec from rest.

And only now will you start to appreciate how fast this car is because, until now, you’ve only been using part throttle. How fast? So fast that it’s actually uncomfortable on first acquaintance. As the car shoots forward, the acceleration penetrates right through to your deepest internal organs. In second gear, the F1 added 10mph per each half second. You’ll pass 100mph in third, having been mobile for 6.3sec. The second-fastest car we have tested, Jaguar’s XJ220, asked for 7.9sec for the same measure. And still the McLaren is not in its stride. 

It does 0-120mph in 9.2sec, a decent enough 0-60mph time for a hot hatch. It will reach 150mph from rest quicker than the new Porsche 911 will reach 100mph. But the statistic to end them all is this: in sixth gear, it will cover 180-200mph in 7.6sec. A Ferrari 512 TR needs longer to do 50-70mph in fifth. 

Even at 200mph the F1, as sure and stable as it was at 100mph, accelerates hard. Had we enough Tarmac, we have no doubt that it would finally stop accelerating at its rev limiter in top which, taking tyre growth into account, would be somewhere the far side of 230mph. A prototype with only about 580bhp has achieved 231mph – and that on a banked circuit in 40deg C heat, both of which would serve to blunt its potential. 

Its in-gear performance is similarly stupefying. How does 60-80mph in second in 1.2sec grab you, or 90-110mph in third in just 1.7sec? Or the fact that every single 20mph increment between 30mph and 130mph in fourth is dispatched within a tenth of 2.2sec? It doesn’t slow much in fifth either, every increment between 30mph and 160mph taking 3.0sec flat or less. But it is sixth, geared to allow the car to reach beyond 230mph, that stretches belief beyond breaking point.

Our standard measure for top gear flexibility, aimed at cars with maximum speeds of about half the McLaren’s, is 50-70mph. The F1 covers the ground in 3.7sec, blitzing the next fastest production car we have tested (the TVR Griffith 500) by 1.7sec. 

For its flexibility, throttle response and power alone, this V12 would probably wrest the title of world’s best engine from the Ferrari 512 TR. But the sound it makes puts the issue beyond doubt. Smooth, subtle and, above all, quiet when you want it to be, the F1 gives everything you have ever wanted from an engine note when the throttle is opened wide. 

Full throttle at 60mph in sixth produces a noise closer to that of the Mustang in Bullitt, only louder. It’s a growling crackle that bores into your brain at just the glorious side of painful. Drop four gears and repeat the exercise and only those who have seen the film Le Mans or were present at endurance races in the early 70s will have any inkling of the complexity and savagery of its utterly pure V12 howl. It is the finest noise any of us here have ever heard from a production road car.