Let’s see a show of digital hands on this one in the comments. Who remembers the infamous scene from Fast and Furious 7 where Dominic Toretto and Brian O’Conner jump a Lykan HyperSport between skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi? That could be the only way the McLaren Senna featured in the above video ever sees the ground again. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, but if supercriminals take station in Melbourne’s latest luxury high-rise, all bets are off.
We suspect Adrian Portelli might object to his Senna being hijacked by criminals or commandeered by automotive superheroes to save the world. He’s the affluent owner of this rare, expensive McLaren, which is now parked 57 stories off the ground in the Sapphire by the Gardens tower, a new skyscraper in Melbourne, Australia. It’s so new that construction was just completed, and Portelli bought a top-floor penthouse for a cool $39 million in Australian currency. That’s $25.9 million in US dollars, so clearly Portelli can afford to shell out a few million for the Senna and its unorthodox delivery to his new home.
According to 7 News Australia, the selling price for the penthouse actually included the Senna’s delivery cost, so this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a complicated process, apparently requiring traffic on the street below to be halted as the McLaren ascended to the sky. In the video, Portelli said the car was “collecting dust in a showroom” so he decided it would be better served by being on display in his apartment. At the top of a skyscraper. Where there’s no possible way it can be driven. In fact, the video mentions that, if Portelli ever sells the penthouse, the car will likely go with it.
That also means the Senna likely won’t go to an auction house anytime soon. It was lifted using one of the large skyscraper construction cranes, left on-site specifically for delivering the car to the penthouse. Furthermore, it looks like the car went in through a block of windows that hadn’t yet been installed. So at this point, there’s not even a door to get it outside, never mind a way to lower it hundreds of feet to the ground.
Only 500 McLaren Sennas were built, named after the legendary F1 driver Aryton Senna and designed to dominate race tracks. For the foreseeable future, this one will dominate the 57th floor at the Sapphire by the Gardens tower.
