A low-mileage McLaren Senna sold for $1.45 million at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona. The specific Senna, VIN# 005, sold for more than the $1 million starting price that a brand-new Senna would’ve cost. Unfortunately, McLaren only built 500 units of the supercar, and all 500 Senna units, including 120 in the U.S., already have owners. Actually, only 499 units of the 789-horsepower supercar remain after one of them was charred to a crisp recently. Perhaps that developed spurred the spike in price for the Senna that was being auctioned off at Barrett-Jackson. Perhaps it didn’t. Either way, the winning bidder not only won a Senna, but he also won a Senna with just 281 miles in its odometer. That’s a pretty sweet deal for all parties involved.

I suppose we should’ve seen this coming. When McLaren launched the Senna last year, it did so with a tremendous amount of hype surrounding the 789-horsepower beast. Naturally, the Senna has lived up to the mammoth expectations McLaren placed on it. All 500 units sold out quickly, including the 120 units that McLaren allocated for the U.S. market.

Normally, a used car sells for less than the amount that it was purchased brand new. As the saying goes, a car’s price drops 40 percent by the time it rolls out of a dealership. But a handful of models — they’re usually of the exotic variety — buck that trend and go the other way. Their prices go up as second-hand models compared to a brand-new one. They’re called collectible pieces and collectors pay good money to snag them and add them to their collection. As it turns out, it barely took the Senna the equivalent of a nine-month pregnancy to reach that rarefied air.

The fact that a McLaren Senna sold for almost $1.5 million at the Barrett-Jackson auction isn’t surprising, at least if you think about how desirable the Senna has become. It’s not like this is some kind of “random” Senna, either, though even referring to the Senna as a “random” supercar makes me feel dirty. This model carries chassis number 005, or VIN 005, making it the fifth McLaren Senna to roll out of production in Woking, England. It’s not the first U.S.-spec Senna to arrive in the country, though.

Don’t sleep on this Senna, though. It’s still one of the early production models, and, if we’re talking about exclusive colors, it’s also one of the few Sennas to wear the Amethyst Black paint finish that McLaren was touting when it launched the supercar last year. And before anybody gets lost in all the exclusive paint finishes, don’t forget that the Senna’s beating heart is a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 engine that delivers 789 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. Combine that with a weight of just 2,641 pounds (1,198 kilos) — it's lighter than a Honda Civic and weighs as much as a Mazda MX-5 Miata — and you have a machine that returns a power-to-weight ratio of 658 pounds per ton, allowing it to sprint from 0 to 60 mph in an absurd 2.7 seconds. That’s 0.1 seconds quicker than McLaren’s flagship hypercar, the P1. Extend that acceleration time to 124 mph, and it only takes the Senna 6.8 seconds to cover that ground, a full second quicker than the 720S.

Take all that into account, and there’s a reason a lot of auto collectors would trip over themselves, or, at least in this case, feverishly try to outbid each other just so they can get their hands on a Senna. Is $1.45 million a fair price for the fifth-produced Senna with barely 300 miles on it? I would think so, especially when you consider what the expected market is for this model once it ages gracefully.

For now, the award for “most expensive McLaren Senna to sell at an auction” goes to the Senna wearing chassis No. 193, which fetched a whopping $2.67 million back in December 2017. It’s surprising that a Senna with a random chassis number would outsell one with a sought-after early chassis number, but that’s the kind of market the Senna dictates. Given its limited status and the amount of power and state-of-the-art technology it’s carrying, it’s not surprising that the car sells for more than McLaren’s asking price.

I suppose it just depends on how much money someone’s willing to pay for it. Checkbook mileage varies when you’re talking about cars of the Senna’s caliber. It was $1.45 million last week, but it could be double that in a few month’s time. All we know at this point is the people who managed to buy one and are still holding on to theirs have a goldmine in their hands.

McLaren Performance Specifications

Further Reading

Read our full review on the 2019 McLaren Senna.