Rowan Atkinson gets staggering £910,000 insurance payout after supercar crash

Crash ... Rowan Atkinson crashed McLaren F1


MR BEAN star Rowan Atkinson has his beloved supercar back in one piece after insurers coughed up a staggering £910,000 to fix it - the biggest-ever repair bill in Britain.


Rowan suffered a shoulder injury in 2011 when he crashed the McLaren F1, for the second time.
But while the comic actor recovered quickly his 240mph supercar spent more than a year in the hands of McLaren’s expert technicians.
The result was a £910,000 bill for a car which cost him £640,000 in 1997 - three times as much as the previous most expensive repair claim.




Rowan, 58, worth a reported £71 million, hit a slippery patch of road near Peterborough in August 2011 before ploughing into a tree.
The car’s 6.1-litre engine was ripped out in the crash and was left 20 yards away.
Experts at McLaren Special Operations spent four weeks calculating how much the vehicle would cost to rebuild before coming up with the eye-watering near-£1million total.



Supercar ... Atklinson paid £640,000 for the car in 2007, Alexis Gray-Cowley / SWNS


The huge bill is more than three times the previous biggest: £300,000 stumped up by Aviva to fix a wrecked Pagani Zonda sports car in 2010.
The mammoth job was given the go-ahead by Rowan's insurance company because the value of all F1s has soared, with one example selling for £3.5 million last year.
Now, 16 months after the accident, Rowan is back on the road in the car and wants to continue to use it regularly.




He said: “I’m not a collector. I don’t like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate.
“It depresses me that they are hidden away like investment art, or gold ingots in a Swiss vault.
“The McLaren is just so usable, it is a crime not to use it. No gritted teeth, you just get in and drive.”
McLaren built just 64 road-going F1s and they are now regarded as one of the most sought-after modern cars.
It was the second time Atkinson had crashed his F1, with the actor - currently appearing on stage in Quartermaine’s Terms at Wyndham’s Theatre in London - front-ending it into a Rover Metro in 1999.