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Actually, the first owner of XP4 was a New Zealander named Sir Roger Bhatnagar who its been said was able to arrange to purchase this very special F1 due to a connection to the Bruce McLaren family trust. When he owned the car it was identical in appearance to how it was when Tiff Needel drove it for that Top Gear segment. News reports claim that Sir Roger paid $950,000 for the car in 1994, and sold it in 2000 to it's current owner for a mere $800,000. Quite a bargain compared to present day F1 values.
Here's a pair of shots from when the car was for sale in New Zealand - you can see the interior was still the same at that time.
It was the car's current (2nd) owner who had the factory redo the interior after his purchase. The new style on the seating surfaces is often referred to as "GT-spec" as that pattern first debutted on the longtail F1 GT road car. Here's a couple of photos taken inside the factory while it was undergoing that refit in 2000.
Safe to assume they carried out service on other necessary items like replacement of the fuel cell at that time. The headlights were also upgraded to HIDs and I believe the larger upgraded radiators may have been fitted to the car as well.
XP4 ranks as one of my personal favorite F1s. The owner is also one of the best there is, using the car as intended and never hesitant to share it with other enthusiasts. Here are some other wallpaper quality shots for those who also appreciate it the way that I do:
Incidentally, only one of the earlier F1 prototypes still exists today and it is XP3 which was given as a present to Gordon Murray at the end of production. Prototype XP1 was crashed in the Namibian desert of Africa during hot weather testing by a BMW test driver very early in its life. XP2 was the F1 used for the barrier crash testing and quite a bit of other development work. While the barrier test didn't damage the car beyond repair, it was a pretty crude development hack and Gordon Murray told me that it was scrapped once it was no longer useful.
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