Carbon Copy

I first saw the car on a magazine cover at a friend’s house when we were still at school back in 1995/6 and I remember being filled with feelings of awe and wonder as to how this must have been the most beautiful car ever created!

- Danie Brough

I also remember how my feelings turned to despair and even a little jealousy after reading the article (many times) and realizing that even if I had all the money in the world, I could never even think about owning an LM. They were simply the most expensive cars ever built and not only that, there would only ever be five LMs on earth.

Back in 1999 I came across an ad where someone was selling what could only be described as no more than an idea of a part of a McLaren F1 body and bought it immediately.

We (my dad and I) decided to start straight away and build the ultimate supercar from those pieces, bought an old Westbank modified racecar chassis, had a very expensive Big Block Chev engine custom built, mated it with a g50 Porsche gearbox and started working on the body. Only thing is, I had zero experience in car building and the project soon died a slow death.

Many years later after having built, restored and customized a few cars, and because the flame had never gone out, the time came to finish the McLaren that had been gathering dust for so many years. But this time, I had gained a couple of years’ experience and also been able to obtain way more information about the car.

So, I decided to discard everything I did on the car originally and started over from scratch with basically only the B-pillar of the body for reference.

This time I wanted to do McLaren proud and build a car that would be as close to the real thing in every way as possible and this is how the “Carbon Copy” (as we like to call it) was born. This car represents one of my top 3 dream cars.