When car collecting meets real estate meets publicity stunts, you get something straight out of Fast & Furious 7. A McLaren Senna GTR, which reportedly set the record for Australia’s most expensive used car, has been lifted by crane into the most expensive penthouse in Melbourne, costing AU$39 million, or $26 million at today’s exchange rate.
We don’t get a lot of news from Australia, but it seems the exotic and real estate markets are just as crazy there as in America. A young local businessman, Adrian Portelli, has managed to set a couple of records while showing the world something you don’t see very often: a rare supercar like the McLaren Senna GTR being lifted 57 stories into the air and driven into a penthouse apartment. It’s like the Lykan Hypersport stunt, only in reverse!
While this is obviously a stunt, it’s not a cheap one, and its effects are semi-permanent. The luxury Melbourne penthouse apartment is reportedly the most expensive ever sold. It sits at the top of the twin towers which are connected by a sky bridge. Also, the McLaren Senna GTR was just bought for AU$3 million ($2m), which is still only 8% of what the apartment cost, so it’s like buying high-end furniture for you and me.
An eight-man crew was required to lift the car into the air down from La Trobe Street and into the 57th-floor home. And it’s only possible now when the building is under construction. Once everything’s done, the Senna GTR is stuck there as an expensive piece of decoration.
McLaren only built 75 of these cars. They are track cars which are illegal to drive on the road. All are in the hands of collectors who rarely put any miles on them, but it’s still a little sad that the Senna GTR will never get to do a burnout or take a corner in anger. Such is the fate of collector toys!
Is the McLaren Senna GTR special?
The McLaren Senna is already a special and rare car, obviously named after one of the best racing drivers of all time. They made 500 of those, but then the Senna GTR takes that to a new level. It’s a track-only conversion of which they only made 75 examples.
The GTR has 1000 kilograms of downforce thanks to the heavily revised aerodynamics package which is made of carbon fiber. The beating heart is a twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 engine sending 814 hp to the rear wheels. What they don’t usually tell you is that companies like Lanzante can convert them to be road-legal again. They’re legal in the UK, but I’m not sure if Australia would allow it.
There are other Senna GTRs that look exactly like this one. That’s because it’s got a specific livery that McLaren did as a tribute to the Ayrton Senna’s McLaren MP4/4 Formula One car, which dominated during the 1988 championship. This livery consists of Anniversary White with red accents and gloss carbon-fiber exterior elements, plus the number 12 from the race car. However, Adrian Portelli substituted the Marlboro logos for his own LMCT+ company branding.
