Typically when an employee – no matter how high up the totem pole – leaves a company, he (or she) is asked to return all company property: files, laptops, even the company car. But Ron Dennis could end up leaving McLaren with more than just an ordinary executive sedan.
According to Autosport, the deal between the company and its longtime chief executive is tied to an enviable roster of 13 cars described as “the cream of the McLaren collection.”
Those include the Formula One cars in which Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen, and Lewis Hamilton won their world championships, as well as a handful of race-winning chassis from 1985, '86, and '88. Other notables include the groundbreaking carbon-fiber MP4-1 from 1981, the MP4/8 in which Senna won his last race in 1993, and the experimental Lamborghini-powered MP4/8 prototype he tested that's currently on loan to the Italian automaker.
Those could all end up in Dennis' hands, but only if the company fails to transfer the £37.5 million it's agreed to pay him for his shares. And there's little indication that McLaren won't live up to its financial arrangement.
The company's stockpile of historic F1 cars is rather unique in that, while many teams sell or scrap their old chassis after they're done with them, McLaren has held on to nearly every single one since Dennis took over back in '81. It stores most of them at a locked-down warehouse called Unit 2, located adjacent to the McLaren Technology Centre and McLaren Production Centre in Woking. It displays some of its cars on the Boulevard that forms the atrium in the MTC, and dispatches others to McLaren Automotive showrooms around the world. But ownership rests firmly in the company's hands, and will likely continue as such, as long as it honors the terms of its contract with its departing chairman.
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