2011 McLaren Speaker Series at Pebble Beach...

[Peloton25]

It has taken me far too long to get to this, but I created some free time this morning in lieu of my much needed beauty sleep.

As you all likely read in my Monterey thread, on the Friday of that weekend I had the good fortune to attend a discussion in the McLaren tent that covered the McLaren F1. Here's a copy of the registration screen someone was kind enough to link me to:

<-- Click

Specifically this discussion was called "Auction Investing and the McLaren F1" and was held inside the McLaren tent on the grounds at Pebble Beach just off the main fairway where the Concours would be held on Sunday. The main presenter was McLaren's head of Special Operations, Paul Mackenzie and he was joined by Katie Hellwig from Gooding & Co, the auction house who last year auctioned chassis #062. They are of course well known for being leaders in the business of finding new owners for fine motorcars.



Lynne Arciero of McLaren North America started it off by welcoming everyone and introducing McLaren Automotive's Managing Director, Antony Sheriff.



Antony greeted the crowd and handled the introductions of both Paul and Katie before coming to take one of the few empty seats left that happened to be right next to me.



Paul started off the discussion with an outline of the history of the F1 - a fairly concise overview where he should be pleased to know he didn't make a single mistake.



Paul's presentation included some slides - I didn't snap photos of every single one as most were images quite familiar to anyone with a copy of "Driving Ambition". Here's a few though:





I certainly recognized this one.



Then Paul shared a video of the XP5's record setting speed run at Ehra Lessien in 1998 at the hands of Andy Wallace:



If you are like me, that picture brings Andy Wallace's dialogue fresh in my mind beginning with 'On the banking at the far end...'


When the video was done he flipped to another slide that made me gasp a bit:

<-- Clickable

Of course that image was taken at an event we are all familiar with, but this was a unique photo from a great angle that it is unlikely most reading here have ever had the good fortune to see. I was later told that photo was printed and given to the F1 owners in attendance that day. I learned about that last little fact just before I was ready to start begging for a copy of it. Unfortunately there was a light in the ceiling of the tent casting some glare on the screen and taking a photo of a projected image is never a great idea, but at least it's here for the rest of you to see. Maybe someday a better version will fall out of the sky and land in our laps?

Now this slide was particularly interesting. The gentleman from McLaren who'd first alerted me of this discussion and eventually sent me the link to register had mentioned there would be some slides in Paul's presentation that I'd be interested in and this one definitely piqued my curiosity. If I could get regular updates of this one in my inbox, that would be a big help.

<-- Clickable

It doesn't show where every single F1 is in the world, but certainly covers most of them. If you add up the numbers it references a total of 75 cars. I can't say exactly which ones were excluded, but I don't think you can make a blanket statement and say that it was all the GTRs as some of them (like the one in Brunei's remaining 7 F1s) seems to be accounted for here. I also don't believe there are 17 F1 road cars in the UK. Some of those must be GTRs too.

After studying it, I certainly can't name all the cars that apply to each little bubble, but we could get pretty close I think. Surely Australia's (1) is #009 and New Zealand's (2) are #018 and #049. The (2) over South Africa are #023 and #037. Those are all the easy ones though. The number I found most intriguing is the (3) over Hong Kong as I only believed that #016 and #064 were there. This leaves me wondering if perhaps #053 never left Hong Kong, even though we were at one point informed it was on a plane to the Middle East? Anyway - I don't think we'll solve any mysteries with such a limited view of the data, but it is very interesting to see.

The next slide was presented to show prices recorded in F1 transactions that the factory has assisted with over the past few years - put together in an effort to show the fairly meteoric rise in F1 values.

<-- Clickable

Strangely there's no reference to the actual dates along the bottom of the graph, but you can pick out the high water mark of chassis #065 that sold in October 2008 at RM London for £2.5M and then later the £2.25M paid for #062 in August 2010. Wouldn't it be lovely if they had thought to tag each one of those bullets with a chassis number for reference - but again we'll take what we can get.

Note this slide doesn't cover all the F1 transactions that have occurred over whatever time period we are looking at here. Rather, it is my understanding these are only the ones were the factory assisted in brokering the sale or perhaps where published figures were made available. Also, it appears one car has sold since the August 2010 sale of #062 for a higher price if I am reading it correctly. I can think of two possibilities for which car that might be. Again, it's about as vague as it can be while still presenting some value.

Paul then handed off speaking duties to Katie from Gooding & Co who explained the nature of Gooding's business and covered some of their past record sales including the private treaty sale of the late Peter Williamson's 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic for a still undisclosed sum that was "above $30M dollars." Small gasps filled the room.



Katie mentioned she had just finished reading a copy of "Driving Ambition" in order to prepare herself for this discussion which I thought was pretty cool.

As part of her time she showed most of the video they recorded during the Gooding auction last year when #062 came across the auction block.



Katie explained the 10% buyer's premium added to that on screen figure brought the final price paid up to $3.575M.

She then mentioned the October 2008 auction price of #065 and how its dramatic result had started people talking, but that one occurrence does not create a trend. It took Gooding's result with #062 in 2010 to prove that the values of McLaren F1s were really getting that much stronger.

She explained that for a car to be highly valuable it needed to have three things (apologies for not taking good notes) and while I don't wish to misquote her she then explained how the McLaren F1 covered all the bases.

She then suggested there were other noteworthy cars that could be compared to the F1 as having a similar set of traits, and stated that their performance in the market place might be indicative of the future performance of a McLaren F1. These were what your stock broker might describe as "forward looking statements" but they certainly seemed like valid points she was making.

The one car in particular I recall her associating the F1 with was the Alfa Romeo 8C (the old one) as being equivalent in status and desirability and that the results that have been seen in the value increase of that car were likely to be something we'd see with the F1 over time. I think there were one or two other cars she mentioned here as well, but I wasn't planning to take notes so that I could spell it all out like this later on. Sorry...

While I might have been able to give Paul's history lesson on my own it would have stretched on for four hours instead of the 20+ minutes he managed to get it done in. The portions that Katie added were somewhat out of my scope but very understandable and interesting. The presentation ended with the question and answer session I've already explained so much about which I was honored and amazed to be invited to assist with. The whole experience of just being there was great.

Some of those slides are clickable for the largest version I have hosted. I will also have a link to the full gallery later on which offers some additional shots not included above. There's nothing really F1-specific that has been left out - some 12C stuff and some Paul Mackenzie glamour shots you might want to get framed up.

I did figure a couple of those slides had the ability to generate some discussion that might be lost inside my Monterey thread, hence the reason for starting a new one. If all of this sparks any questions let me know.

>8^)
ER

[Peloton25]

I also attended the follow up discussion hosted this time by Dick Glover. I think I owe McLaren an extra $40 for my unpaid attendance fee.

His discussion centered on technologies and ideas for making cars go faster in Formula One that have subsequently been banned over the years. The idea being that with McLaren Automotive they won't have those types of restrictions on how they can adapt some of those advancements into their new road cars. I only took a pair of photos during that discussion - the rest of the time I was just fixated what Dick had to say.





I already mentioned this was one of the best presentations I've seen anyone give. That many really knows his stuff and is quite deserving of the title of "Chief Rocket Scientist" that Antony introduced him with.

You may have noticed on the invite there were two more discussions scheduled for Saturday. My date card was pretty full that afternoon but I do wish I'd made it back to the tent for Frank Stephenson's presentation too. I bet that was great!

>8^)
ER

[tak43]

Hi Erik

Many thanks for sharing this

tak43

[AF Mascot]

stellar! thanks for the share!! I think I'll share this on af's face book page so everyody can enjoy!

[hurstg01]

[english humour on]Cheers Erik, but I think your beauty sleep is of more urgency than future updates[/english humour off]







PS - 5 in France..........?

[Peloton25]

I took that to mean 5 in Europe, not just France.

Sorry if you got your hopes up Phil.

>8^)
ER

[mini magic]

Originally Posted by Peloton25

<-- Clickable

[Paulthagerous]

Agreed 100% with the NZ based ones, and Australia’s #009, and South Africa’s 2. If only the Recap threads were up to date we may be able to point out to Mclaren where some of the ones they missed are

As a side note, one up to date, quick reference thread with all last-know locations (no pictures, descriptions, history, or anything to clutter them up) might be quite a useful one, though I doubt I would be competent enough to do it. Guess I could try and you let me know how many I screw up!

[Peloton25]

The struggle with the recap threads is always keeping up with them as things change. Sometimes news comes the way of any number of us that is NPI (Non-Public Information). For instance, there are currently four cars that need to be removed from one of the recap threads, but only two of them have resurfaced in a public manner elsewhere in the world. I'd prefer our info was always up to date and as accurate as possible, but at the same time have to respect confidential sources. That leaves a bit of a dilemma as to how to proceed with them. Adding one more of those types of threads isn't going to help a whole lot - at least not in my opinion.

Another 'for instance' - there should still be 2 in Canada unless something has changed quite recently, which I doubt. The chart only shows one.

>8^)
ER

[Paulthagerous]

Yeah, that struck me as odd too, especially as I was under the impression both were owned by the same gentleman, so no idea why one would be excluded...

[Peloton25]

Maybe McLaren have forgotten he has a road car since it never leaves the garage?

>8^)
ER

[Paulthagerous]

With your new found friends surely if they were happy for you to publish this photo they will be happy to tell you their criteria for adding one into the diagram or not...

[Peloton25]

To be transparent, I don't know that 'happy for you to publish this photo' is at all a true statement. I'd certainly like to think that it is as I have no interest in doing anything to upset them.

I can say there was no request made at any point during the discussion sessions to withhold taking photos and I did nothing to hide the fact that I was doing just that. I had Antony seated to my left in the first discussion and Paul to my right during the second one - I'm sure they noticed - as did some others in the room. I am about to forward Lynne a link to this thread as an FYI since she was the organizer of all of this. It is also quite safe to assume that some others from inside McLaren are already paying attention here - not necessarily for any diabolical reasons either - and may have already seen this thread. I really get the feeling most of them are just as enthusiastic about these great cars as we are, and we do manage to put on a pretty good show here that has clearly captured the interest of some of them over time.

I did ask Marcus or Paul (forget which one ) how recent the data was on the slide showing the locations of cars and it was something like less than two weeks old at the time. I hadn't added up the numbers on the chart yet to realize so many cars were missing so I failed to ask for an explanation on that at all.

In my experiences since the Monterey weekend I've been able to get confirmation of two or three items that were already strongly assumed, and I was quite pleased with that. However, I've also slid in a couple of open ended questions that weren't really addressed in the reply. From that it's clear the people I've chatted with are not free-flowing secrets my way and honestly I didn't really expect them to open the flood gates. Over time I certainly hope the lines of communication will grow in support of our cause and that we can form a mutually beneficial relationship with the team at McLaren Automotive that will allow them to gain from the knowledge we've recorded and compiled. It could even go further than that too, and I remain eagerly optimistic for that.

>8^)
ER

[cabrio92]

Hello,

Very interesting Erik This map is cool but incomplete and leaves misteries and questions.

I am not sure McLaren really knows about all F1 locations or maybe one customer can tick a case "I don't want to appear on the map you will show ro Erik"

5 in Europe #012, #007, #11R, #15R, #001 or #075, #048... It makes 6.

You know Greg, when I told to someone claimed to try a F1 road car in France there were for me 2 or 3 F1s in France, he laughed and said I can add 2 !

Strangely, the 2 and then 1 GTR in France are known but no road cars and I have suspicion on 4.

Phil

[Peloton25]

Don't count #012 - the data presented by this slide is older than that relocation. It would have still been allocated to Japan at that point.

I will try to help more later.

>8^)
ER