Rowan Atkinson is best known for playing hapless characters on screen, but away from comedy, the actor quietly set a very different kind of record — one that still stands as the largest car insurance payout in British history. The crash happened in August 2011, when Rowan Atkinson lost control of his McLaren F1 on a slippery stretch of the A605 near Peterborough. The 240mph supercar skidded off the road, slammed into a tree and a road sign, and suffered catastrophic damage.
Atkinson escaped with a shoulder injury, but the car did not fare so lightly. 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 followed would make motoring and insurance history. The vehicle involved was no ordinary supercar. Atkinson had bought the McLaren F1 in 1997 for £647,000, at a time when it was already regarded as one of the most advanced road cars ever built. Only 64 were produced, and its carbon-fibre construction and bespoke engineering meant repairs were never going to be straightforward.
Instead of being written off, the car was sent back to McLaren’s factory in Woking, where specialist technicians undertook a painstaking rebuild.
The process took around a year of work — and the bill was staggering. Insurers ultimately paid out around £900,000 to £910,000, smashing the previous UK record for a single motor insurance claim, which had been set just a year earlier.
The scale of the payout was driven by the car’s rare materials, complex design and the fact that virtually every component required specialist handling.
At the time, the cost equated to roughly $1.4 million, making it one of the most expensive private car repairs ever.
Remarkably, this was not even Atkinson’s first incident in the same car. He had previously damaged the McLaren in a 1999 collision, resulting in another major repair job.
Despite that history, he continued to drive the vehicle regularly, reportedly covering around 40,000 miles during his ownership.
After the extensive repairs, Atkinson, who turns 71 on Tuesday (January 6), returned to the driver’s seat and later described the experience, 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 becoming a financial disaster, the McLaren ultimately proved a lucrative investment. Atkinson kept the car for several more years before selling it in 2015, long after values for the F1 had soared.
The sale price ran into the tens of millions, comfortably eclipsing both the original purchase cost and the eye-watering repair bill.
“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.
