First things first, the McLaren F1 is fast. Very fast. With a top speed of 240 mph, you won't be opening this up on your local suburban street anytime soon, even though the car was designed to be the ultimate streetcar. At 150 mph this car feels like you're tooling along at 30 mph in your Honda Civic. That's a lot of power, and that was designer Gordon Murray's intent - to build the world's greatest supercar.

Gordon Murray is Jay Leno's self-professed "hero." Though the McLaren F1 solidified his legend in the automotive world, Murray was well known long before his most-famous car started making car fans drool around the world.

Born in Durban, South Africa, Murray began his professional career, oddly enough, as a missile designer. It didn't take long for Murray to find more suitable employment with Brabham where he designed Grand Prix cars. In 1986, he was hired by McLaren and in 1991, work began on the car that would become most associated with this expert designer.

The Big Idea behind the F1 was to keep the weight of the car as light as possible while giving it as much power as humanly - and mechanically - feasible. To achieve this, super-lightweight (and expensive!) materials were used: for instance, a carbon fiber body, magnesium, titanium, and gold. The lightweight exhaust system alone costs $45,000.

According to Jay, the car is close to driving a go-cart with no power steering and no power brakes. In fact, nothing in the car, save for a specially designed Kenwood stereo system, is extraneous to its single purpose: going fast.

To achieve this, the car features a great big heart, a 6.1-litre 60° V12 BMW V12 engine to be exact. Because of its excellent weight distribution, the car handles phenomenally well. And considering that it costs a million dollars, most buyers would expect nothing less, even if McLaren claims they lost money on every F1 they built.

Though at 253 mph the Bugatti Veyron can go faster, many consider the McLaren F1 a superior car because of how it handles, its design, and because it was developed to be a proper, street-legal sports car. "It's a more visceral driving experience," says Jay, and he should know - he owns the 15th of only 65 street versions of these amazing vehicles that were ever made.