McLaren’s secret car stash to reach the public

McLaren's Unit 2 collection is made up the biggest collection of McLaren cars including both production models and Formula One racers with no McLaren Formula One car sold on the open market. While other manufacturers, like Ferrari, sell its F1 cars from years past, McLaren has been storing and maintaining them since Ron Dennis first took control of the team in 1981.

The warehouse has held as many as 75 McLaren F1 cars that span more than 50 years of competition and twenty drivers' and constructors' world championships.

McLaren says all cars remain in full working condition with everything the McLaren engineers need to get them running again neatly arranged: stacked rows of period wheels and tyres, the specific jacks made to fit each individual car design, and even the vintage vastly-outdated laptop computers required to run the equally superseded software that some of the cars require to turn over.

McLaren is opening 35 showrooms by the end of 2012 and will use a Unit 2 display car alongside its modern supercars, the MP4-12C and upcoming McLaren F1 successor, in every dealership. The first car to leave Unit 2 was Lewis Hamilton's 2008 championship-winning MP4-23, now hanging over the entrance to the London showroom at One Hyde Park.

Others include Kimi Raikkonen's 2004 Belgian Grand Prix winning 2004 MP4-19 heading to Brussels, the McLaren M26 James Hunt won the 1976 US Grand Prix in will rest in Philadelphia and Monte Carlo will receive the 1993 Monaco Grand Prix winning McLaren MP4-8 that was driven to victory by non-other than Ayrton Senna.

No word yet on which car will make the trek across to our fair land to take its spot at Sydney's very own McLaren dealership but Car Advice will be sure to update you once we do.