George Harrison's F1

[mclarenman]

sorry for the picture difficulties.

[Peloton25]

Originally Posted by hurstg01

I only had Vid Caps of his F1 before a few weeks ago, when I was advised by a good friend this was his F1 in the top left hand corner of this shot, identified by the highly-polished wheels -

So the bad news is, that wasn't George's F1 parked there.

That picture was taken at the 1995 Coys Historic Festival and surprisingly that's #003 wearing the polished wheels. The proof lies in these two pics just shared by Antsphoto on Flickr. In the first one you can see the Citroen mirrors, and in the second, the "K4 MCL" plate and polished wheel. Click to enlarge each one.





He apologizes for the water damage in his caption. Shame too, as they would have been super-fantastic pictures otherwise.

>8^)
ER

[hurstg01]

Another piece of F1 history corrected; Good work, and antsphoto does take some good F1 GTR shots, doesn't he?

#025 does still have the polished wheels as well as the dark coloured ones shown above. Perhaps it was the fashion back then to have highly polished wheels, as they aren't the only 2 to have worn such styled-wheels.....

[Andy74b]

Sorry didn't take any pics but I have had a good look at the GH car.

Some really personalized features to the car. Suppposidly he world closely with mclaren during the build.

Stunning car.

[Sami Aaltonen]

Thanks for historic images!

[hurstg01]

I have found some pictures of parts of the engine bay and bare carbon fibre from a book that a good friend [who, in about weeks time, I will be buying the first pint for ] pointed me in the direction of called 'George Harrison - Living in the material world'. I bought it straight away, and it arrived earlier today. The last picture is of George's Mclaren Owners manual and is signed by all the mechanics who worked on his car.

Enjoy

[volvoman]

I have been trying hard to get some fresh material for all of us that Hurst or Erik have never seen

Russ

[carbuilder2002]

Fantastic detail

[hurstg01]

Originally Posted by volvoman

I have been trying hard to get some fresh material for all of us that Hurst or Erik have never seen

Russ

There is an awful lot we have seen, but vast amounts yet to be seen

[Peloton25]

It's great to see these images Greg - appreciate you acquiring the book and scanning them so we could all enjoy them.

Originally Posted by hurstg01

Interestingly, on Wednesday I have a chance to meet one of the names that appears on this list. It's not one that anyone would necessarily recognize I don't think, but he still works for McLaren and I hope to be able to pick his brain a little bit about his time working with the McLaren F1.

>8^)
ER


PS: Thatmustbetheworldslongestimagefilenameever.jpg

[cabrio92]

Erik,

where are 004 & 010 !

[Peloton25]

Sorry Phil - he hasn't been keeping track of F1s all these years so he was not a resource for questions like that one. After the F1 project was completed he worked on development and construction of the SLR and then when that wound down he has now moved on to work with the 12C and future models from McLaren Automotive.

Still he has some fond memories of the time working with the F1 and it was great to sit and chat with him for a couple of hours while we sifted through some of the things I thought he'd be interested in from my digital archive. I also brought him a printed copy of the signature image from George's car pictured above and by his recollection that was the panel behind the seats, not the Owner's Manual of the car that those signatures were placed on. You can see something very similar in the shot of #075 being assembled from "Driving Ambition" here:

<-- Click

Another thing he mentioned about the Harrison car is pictured in the fourth photo of Greg's post. What you see there is a song lyric from 'Last Thoughts on Woody Gutherie' by Bob Dylan and if one were to examine the bare chassis of car #025 they'd find similar lines written in quite a few places. Apparently George had asked Gordon to do this and my new friend stated that during the few months they were building the car Gordon would occasionally come from his office with a silver pen and hand write some lyric he'd just heard or one that popped into his mind onto a piece of the car. Because of this extremely unique 'feature' of George's F1, if it were to ever be heavily damaged repairing it to its original state would be quite an impossible feat.

The things he found most interesting from my collection were factory photos from when the cars were being produced - something I also happen to treasure. He found them interesting because it brought back the memories of all those guys he had worked with on the cars and in each instance he'd run through his memory to offer their name and where they might have ended up. Quite a few work for Gordon now at his design firm, several others moved on to various racing teams in the UK and the odd few are still there at McLaren as well holding different roles like he does.

They built the earliest GTRs there at Genesis and his favorite car of the entire lot was #06R with the Harrods livery. I asked him if he had a favorite road car and he recalled a Dark Blue car with a brown leather interior that was fitted with ashtrays sourced from Mercedes Benz and had a child's seat retrimmed to match the car's interior. That was chassis #052 btw. He didn't remember any of the cars by number so I supplied those, but did mention there was a time when cars were coming down the line with two separate numbers which jives with that photo we discussed previously of chassis #071 with the number '099' on the card on the roof. That would have made it more challenging for him to remember cars by their specific chassis numbers.

He recalled a Silver car with a Green interior (...let's call it #057 ) where the owner had specified a green shag carpeting in the luggage lockers - and that when it was installed it looked exactly like grass. He mentioned there were some entertaining photos taken of a picnic scene and a couple of other things in there when they were having a bit of fun.

I did ask him about #004 since that's the only car we know little to nothing about and he explained that he hadn't been a part of the team that early on. He came to McLaren Cars in late 1994 (if I was paying attention) so he wouldn't have memories of the earliest cars. I did show him the pictures of the Red F1 with the "F1 MCL" plate and he stated that was the second demonstrator they built and he remembered it well because the guys in the factory were allowed to choose the color on the car. Apparently an early car had been sprayed in Red at one point - he thought it would have been an XP? - and Ron had said no to that and had it redone. When it came time to build another car they were given free reign and got their red car. He felt the timing of this would have made it #021 and also thought the Red F1 with black interior from the Park Lane showroom would also have been that car.

I reminded him of the BUGS TV episode filming in the factory and he said he had forgotten all about that, but it had been done over a weekend when no one was there. He said quite often they had Japanese film crews coming in to film in the factory while they were working and so there must be some good footage we've missed out on from over there. Maybe someday it will surface?

He mentioned the formation of McLaren Cars Motorsport set up as a separate company to build and support the GTRs. Once the production of them moved to another facility he had less involvement in that. He also reminded me that Creighton Brown was set to begin a TVR-related venture in Brazil in the early part of the last decade called South American Sports Cars which this gentleman was also set to be a part of before all plans were cancelled due to political instability in the region.

One thing I found entertaining too, is that he claims to hold a record (maybe not an official one ) for driving the most McLaren F1s the shortest distance. He said at the end of the production line he'd start the cars, drive them through the customer delivery area, out the main roll up door to the parking lot where he'd do a quick circle and then come back around to where the hose was so they could perform a leak test. He said he'd probably done that little journey in 40 to 50 cars.

He recalled the crash of #033 but not really what may have happened to it afterwards. He had the same recollection of #010 being crashed too as they happened at a similar time but again, not whether the car was ever salvaged. We talked about the Brunei LMs and he assured me the two black cars were done that way originally as he was there and built them. This contradicts one person's claim to me recently that they were originally orange and then redone in the Black & Grey. He also remembered their clone of the Le Mans winner. It slipped my mind to ask him about the F1 that was reported to have been written off in Brunei (doh!) so I'll try and run that by him as a follow up question.

The one place where his recollection ran afoul of my current beliefs is that he was fairly certain the dark brown F1 was the one they named "Creighton Brown" which would make the one in Japan again the "Brazilian Brown" car. I read to him the small section of the CAR Magazine article printed well before the dark brown car was built about the "brown/pink" color being the one to receive that name, but he was still pretty convinced on what he remembered. He said the dark brown car was originally finished with silver wheels instead of the gold ones we have seen. Anyway - I prefer when everyone agrees on things so while I'm not going to revise the story I currently believe to be true just yet, it does put things back into the 'skeptical' column. I told him the only way we can ever be sure is if someone gets eyes on the "Vehicle Build Record" pages of the owner's manual from either car to see what colors are listed there.

I asked him about the headlamps on #059 and after seeing them he remembered them but didn't recall what had transpired to make it unique. He thought they'd done one car with HIDs and the projectors in that car are certainly that, but I'm not sure that explains the changing shape of the headlamp lens and the trim piece above that. The components that were installed could have been placed behind a standard lens just the same and saved that extra level of customization.

We also talked about the recent F1 Owner's Gathering at the MTC and I found it somewhat surprising and also disappointing that apparently the McLaren employees were given no advanced notice of the event or any invitation to come and see the cars once they were lined up around the lake. Personally I would think a display like that showcasing a really great piece of the company's history would be a wonderful tool for reminding all the employees of what McLaren is capable of. I guess Ron and company felt it needed to be handled differently? It would have been nice to have at least invited out the employees who worked on the project for sentimental reasons, but that wasn't the case either apparently.

We talked about lots of other little things but nothing that would really be news here so I'll save repeating it. To borrow the words sent to me from someone else who was in the room during our discussion:

"He was really happy that someone has taken such an interest in something that to all the boys at Mclaren was just a "job", although i dont think any of them realized how special it was to become."

That makes me pleased - I certainly enjoyed spending time with him and the ability to share my collection and our gathered knowledge with someone connected to the F1 program was a super big treat for me. If anything else comes to mind from our discussion I'll add it here, but I don't want to get too far off the original topic even though this seemed like the most appropriate place to add this story given the connection to the image and some of the extra info I learned.

>8^)
ER

[cabrio92]

Great read Erik ! I agree on the fact McLaren should invite employees for the gathering. Maybe, they will a new gathering next year ?

did he have pics of this period ?