Rowan Atkinson has ruled British TV for more than three decades with his legendary performance in the comedy series “Mr Bean” in which he never spoke, but his actions spoke a lot of stories. Acting is not the only reason for his fame, he is an acclaimed car enthusiast and owns some of highly exotic supercars. One of them is the McLaren F1 which he bought in 1997, in all these years, it covered 41,000 miles and had two mighty accidents.
It might blow your brains out to know how much this car fanatic has shelled out for this 18 years old, twice totalled supercar. Mr Bean spent around £640,000 for his beloved McLaren and managed to sell it off for a hefty price of £8 million, earning the highest profit in the history of UK motor industry, a £7.3 million profit on a single car sold.
The 1960s Ferraris are the only vehicles tend to fetch more money than that.
In October 1999, Rowan first time ploughed McLaren into the back of a Rover Metro when he was travelling on the A6 at Forton, Lancashire. Then the second accident took place in 2011 when his same F1 got smashed into a tree after he lost control on a slippery curve of the A605 near Peterborough. Fortunately, Rowan sustained only minor injuries and a broken shoulder. This collision was so intense that the 6.1-litre engine ended up 60 feet away from the wreckage.
Well, the cost incurred on this second crash repairs is the highest ever single car insurance pay-out in the Britain. McLaren charged £900,000 to completely rebuild the vehicle to its original specs.
The annual insurance of this beast was also increased to almost £60,000 but all these factors played an important role in appreciating the value of McLaren F1 rather than decreasing it. Another distinction of this car is that it is one of the 64 units ever built, thus when Rowan put it on sale for £8 million, he finally got it.
