Rowan Atkinson racked up the biggest car insurance | UK News

Rowan Atkinson is best identified for taking part in hapless characters on screen, but away from comedy, the actor quietly set a very different type of document — one that still stands as the largest car insurance payout in British historical past. The crash occurred in August 2011, when Rowan Atkinson misplaced control of his McLaren F1 on a slippery stretch of the A605 close to Peterborough. The 240mph supercar skidded off the highway, slammed into a tree and a highway signal, and suffered catastrophic injury.

Atkinson escaped with a shoulder injury, but the car didn’t fare so evenly. Most of the rear of the McLaren was destroyed, and its 6.1-litre V12 engine was reportedly thrown around 20 yards from the wreckage. What adopted would make motoring and insurance historical past. The vehicle concerned was no bizarre supercar. Atkinson had purchased the McLaren F1 in 1997 for £647,000, at a time when it was already regarded as one of the most superior highway automobiles ever constructed. Only 64 have been produced, and its carbon-fibre construction and bespoke engineering meant repairs have been never going to be simple.

Instead of being written off, the car was despatched back to McLaren’s manufacturing facility in Woking, where specialist technicians undertook a painstaking rebuild.

The course of took around a 12 months of work — and the invoice was staggering. Insurers finally paid out around £900,000 to £910,000, smashing the earlier UK document for a single motor insurance declare, which had been set just a 12 months earlier.

The scale of the payout was pushed by the car’s uncommon supplies, complicated design and the fact that just about every part required specialist handling.

At the time, the price equated to roughly $1.4 million, making it one of the most costly non-public car repairs ever.

Remarkably, this was not even Atkinson’s first incident in the same car. He had beforehand broken the McLaren in a 1999 collision, ensuing in another major restore job.

Despite that historical past, he continued to drive the vehicle commonly, reportedly protecting around 40,000 miles during his possession.

After the in depth repairs, Atkinson, who turns 71 on Tuesday (January 6), returned to the driver’s seat and later described the expertise, saying slipping back into the car felt like “putting a familiar sweater on”.

Atkinson told C&SC. “I’m not a collector. I don’t like the top-cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate. It depresses me that they are hidden away like investment art, or gold ingots in a Swiss vault.”

Far from turning into a financial catastrophe, the McLaren finally proved a profitable investment. Atkinson stored the car for a number of more years before promoting it in 2015, long after values for the F1 had soared.

The sale price ran into the tens of tens of millions, comfortably eclipsing both the unique buy price and the eye-watering restore invoice.

“When I bought it in 1997, it all seemed pretty rash, because I was expecting it to depreciate,” said Atkinson.

“But of course it didn’t depreciate, far from it. Meanwhile, I’ve avoided buying Aston Martins and Ferraris, which has saved me a fortune,” he added.