If you’re looking for a cheap track car, salvage auctions can be a great way to go. You needn’t worry about things like roadworthiness or registration, which can help you score a low-buck performance weapon. If your tastes are more McLaren than Mondeo, though, you’ll still need a checkbook with room for six-figure sums.
The McLaren Senna was the British automaker’s attempt to once again build the ultimate performance vehicle. Named after the most revered Formula 1 driver of all time, it followed the legacy of the legendary F1 and P1 before it. It boasted a 4.0-liter V8 engine good for 789 horsepower driving the rear wheels, an all-carbon tub, and dihedral doors befitting a true hypercar. Just 500 were built.
These vehicles do end up driven sometimes, despite their rarity. Sadly, that means they sometimes come to grief. As did this example in Florida, which has since ended up for sale on Copart. No word on who crashed this thing, but it’s ended up in Miami North. Florida Man? Probably involved.
At first glance, you might wonder why this car is even in the salvage yard. It looks intact, the doors work, and Copart even indicates that it runs AND drives. That means they’ve tested that the engine starts and it can be put into gear and driven forward. Surely, that’s a grand bill of health, right?
Hold your horses, turbo. Flip around to the other side, and you’ll see the problem. The passenger-side fender is missing in action, presumably the result of some kind of crash. The headlight has similarly been liberated from the car—it’s shown sitting on the ground along with some other loose bits of body trim. Suddenly, it’s a little more clear how this ended up being listed for auction by State Farm Insurance.
There’s other visible damage, too. The front splitter has obviously taken a hit, the hood is looking a little battered, and the side skirt is torn up as well. You could sign some massive checks to get McLaren to make you new ones, or you could try and save the money and bodge them back into shape yourself. If you’re no good at composites, though, you’d be well advised to do the former.
There is also the risk of unseen damage. The Senna is built with a carbon-fiber monocoque. If the main tub has cracked or otherwise taken damage, proper repair could be uneconomical or even impossible.
At this point, it’s worth discussing the elephant in the room—the price. Bidding on Copart currently sits at $432,000, with five days remaining. In comparison, a McLaren Senna in good condition will set you back around $1.2 to $1.4 million, according to duPont Registry.
The question is whether or not this listing provides ample discount for the damages incurred. It’s almost believable that at anywhere up to a million dollars, you could still fix it for less than you’d pay for a pristine example. Of course, that’s assuming there is no hidden major damage.
It’s a gamble, but this is the game you play when you bid on wrecked supercars that cost more than some houses. It’s a game best played by rich YouTubers. Still, if you have a go yourself, don’t hesitate to drop me a line with what you find in your new (old) McLaren. Good luck out there!
[Ed note: Full disclosure, Copart is a partner of The Autopian. Go over there and sign up for a membership! Then we can debate whether buying a busted McLaren Senna or a busted New York cab was the crazier idea – MH]
quick someone call TAVERSH
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFJhVp7x9Ie/?igsh=MXNsa2dheXQ2d2E4bA==
By wrecked supercar standards, this looks great. Relatively few panels hit and only one corner to replace means this is a job i’d take if I were a Youtuber
I have no experience with exotic super cars, is it normal to insure something like this through a company like State Farm?
For some reason I had assumed that high end and collectible cars would be insured through a specialty insurance company.
$430K is not a “cheap” house.
Depends where you live. In San Jose that’s a one bedroom condo. You can’t a house at that price even if it was condemned.
Where I live you can barely buy a teardown for that money.
Great. You can’t in the area I live in, either. But so what? Clearly we both live in areas that are more expensive than average.
To both the “average” and “median” family income… $430K is not cheap.
Oh just cut off all the flappy bits, tape the headlight on (but don’t take it out at night) and drive the thing! Probably just fine at normal public road speeds. (Or maybe not, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!)
Enough senna will usually un-stuff you
“If your tastes are more McLaren than Mondeo, though, you’ll still need a checkbook with room for six-figure sums.”
Yeah, no kidding! Here’s a YT video of Bruce Weiner (of eponymously named Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum fame https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bruce_Weiner_Microcar_Museum) talking about the costs of driving and maintaining his McLaren: https://youtu.be/EsKDGdcb6BQ?si=hMARuVRmCwcWPYsd
While it may be a bit of a case of apples and oranges, as Weiner’s McLaren was a F1 whereas this is a Senna which is not a direct successor to the F1, it’s still pretty applicable & gives one an idea of just what’s involved in driving & maintaining supercars; it’s not for the faint of heart (or weak of wallet.)
Bruce Weiner also had another perfectly fine mid-engined exotic European car, this one with a targa top, no less, yet he decided to get rid of it despite what I have found to be significantly more modest maintenance costs:
http://microcarmuseum.com/tour/kvs.html
Ah, well. His loss is my gain. Well, for the sake of completeness, his loss was some local guy’s gain, then after that guy had taught his kid to drive in it, my gain.
Nice! Yeah, quite your gain, indeed. I actually remember that, as I visited the museum a few times. Mighty cool car, especially with the *two-wheel-drive* system, ha.
And the Lane Motor Museum was able to acquire a few of that museum’s microcars, when Weiner put the collection up for auction in 2013, including what could be considered the narrowest road-legal car ever produced, a 1948 Larmar, which could be driven through typical doorways https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/larmar-1948/ which was in quite rough shape at the time and has since been restored by the Lane in a lovely shade of deep blue.
A friend wanted to bid on some of the microcars at the auction but told me that some anonymous billionaire kept bidding on so many of the cars and people were simply being outbid and dropping out. My friend was pretty salty about that even though that’s typically the nature of such auctions. Wonder if that’s why the Lane only got a few including the rough Larmar despite being very much the sort of museum where one might find all sorts of microcars.
Thanks! I’m pretty happy with it. It wasn’t in the big auction when the collection closed but was instead part of a smaller sell-off a few years earlier. I bought it on eBay in late 2007 from the guy who had purchased it from the museum.
LOL, problem. It still drives…. who cares. 😛
Freddy Tavarish is probably all over this already. Wrecked supercars are his bread and butter, and this would be the 3rd McLaren.
Some youtuber bought one that was bashed worse than this- I remember the rear quarters are 160k each, his needed a new tub- oddly I saw in Edmonton a tub for sale along with a bunch of other rare things like a complete Luso body that was undamaged but flooded
$400k is a cheap house? That’s 4x what mine cost, and about $100k higher than the average sale price in my area.
A quick google search, “The median home sales price (in the US) is $420,400 as of the third quarter of 2024.”
Median does not equal cheap….
Median: adjective – denoting or relating to a value or quantity lying at the midpoint of a frequency distribution of observed values or quantities, such that there is an equal probability of falling above or below it.
so if the value is below the midpoint, it is comparatively cheap. And as the author lives in Australia where the average house price is the equivalent of $619,975 USD, $400K is considerably cheaper. It all depends on your market!
Yeowch! Context is everything in this case.
“Cheap” does not start right below median. I’d argue it’s at minimum one standard deviation below the median.
A little cardboard and duct tape and you’re all set. If you use the right colors of tape, nobody will even know (at least not from the driver side).
If it works in NASCAR it’ll work here too 🙂
Tough choice on what to spend my spare $400K on:
3/4 of a Senna that may or may not be repairable, a pair of Corvette ZR1s, or 12 new Miatas to field my own racing league
If I’ve learned anything from Tavarish, it’s that this is a sucker’s game.
First thing I thought of followed by Freddy is probably also the top bidder.
Most likely.
& of coarse the first thing i see on instagram today…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFJhVp7x9Ie/?igsh=MXNsa2dheXQ2d2E4bA==
LOL!
This is my shocked face.
No problem. Just trek down to your local Ewe-Pull-It, find a ’74 Ford Maverick, and take the right fender. A few minutes with a sledgehammer and you’ll have a perfect fit!
I would assume it’s got tub damage underneath it or on the firewall.
*Laughs in Ohio*
As someone from Ohio I clicked into this thinking it would be around 150k based on the title. I feel bad for anyone that thinks $430,000 is the cost of a cheap house. I have never paid that much for a house and have lived in some pretty nice places in some pretty nice neighborhoods.
I don’t live in US, but almost moved to it a couple of times. I always had the impression that living in US in a nice place would be expensive, but then became really impressed by the amount of house you can get in certain places, like Tulsa (well, at least before pandemics). But I also understood that you won’t live comfortably in places like SF with $430k.
The amount of variation in home prices across the US is insane. The same $2M house in Southern California could be $350k in certain parts of Ohio.
If you’re okay with hot summers and cold winters, you can generally live pretty comfortably in the Midwest. Another thing is that there’s a lot more culture (art, dining, entertainment, etc.) throughout the Midwest than there’s ever been, since a lot of people are just deciding to stay because it’s so much cheaper than anywhere else.
Median sale price for homes here in Sacramento (not LA, SF, San Diego, etc.) was $485K last month. So the “cheap” moniker accurately applies here, anyway. Sadly.
I don’t doubt it. Sorry friend.