McLaren’s dealership in Beverly Hills has a Speedtail like no other, which recently paid a visit to Jay Leno’s Garage.
The dealership was given this car as a reward for high sales. It’s a Speedtail prototype that’s been finished to production-spec, but wearing the same livery used during testing. McLaren nicknamed the car Albert, referencing Albert Drive in Woking, U.K. That’s the street where the production facility for the McLaren F1 was located. That facility is now home to the McLaren Special Operations (MSO) personalization department.
The unique livery starts with Ueno Gray up front fading into Magnesium Silver at the rear. Magnesium Silver is the color used for the McLaren F1 at its 1992 Monaco Grand Prix debut, and featured on numerous car magazine covers. Ueno Gray is the color of the Ueno-sponsored F1 GTR that won outright at the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans. The lines that connect the two shades represent an optimized airflow pattern, McLaren said when the car was unveiled in 2021.
It took MSO 12 weeks to complete the paint job alone. Those airflow lines are exposed carbon fiber, each with individual pinstripes.
The Speedtail was billed by McLaren as the spiritual successor to the F1, since it was designed as a road car rather than a track car. It also has the F1’s distinctive three-seat arrangement, with the driver placed in the center. That’s something Gordon Murray, designer of the F1, also reproduced for the GMA T.50, his own F1 homage.
Propulsion comes from a hybrid powertrain using a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 and a single electric motor. Peak output of 1,055 hp and 848 lb-ft of torque is sent to the rear wheels, allowing the Speedtail to reach 250 mph.
Just 106 customer cars were built with an estimated price of $2.2 million each. While McLaren didn’t engineer the Speedtail to be street legal in the U.S., about one third of the production run is thought to have ended up here. None of those cars look like Albert, though.
