A rare MCA Centenaire, the Monaco-built supercar that became the first production car to use a full carbon fibre chassis, is heading to auction in Belgium on 9 October. Broad Arrow's Zoute Concours Auction will offer the very first chassis built, a car used for testing and presentations before being stored by Lamborghini and later gifted to MCA founder Fulvio-Maria Ballabio. The auction house estimates it could fetch between €900,000 and €1.2 million.
Only five examples of the Centenaire were produced between 1990 and 1992 by MCA, or Monte Carlo Automotive, a company established by the former Formula 2 and CART driver with backing from a cast of Formula 1 and motorsport figures. Lamborghini supplied 5.2-litre V12 engines from the Countach 5000 QV, producing 449 horsepower and driving the rear wheels through a manual transmission with an open-gate shifter.
The car's significance lies in its structure rather than its powertrain. McLaren had pioneered carbon fibre tubs in its Formula 1 racing cars in 1981 and would bring the technology to its road-going F1 in 1994, but MCA beat it to a production supercar by four years. Jaguar's XJR-15 followed several months later. While cars such as the Ferrari F40 had already used composite components, no manufacturer had built a complete carbon chassis before the Centenaire.
Being first proved costly. The late 1980s supercar price bubble had burst, build costs were high, and there are suggestions that Chrysler, which had recently taken over Lamborghini, was reluctant to supply engines to a rival that might distract attention from its new Diablo. Initial plans targeted 100 sales, but the first phase failed to reach double figures, and attempts to revive the project through the 1990s were no more successful. A planned assault on the Le Mans 24 Hours also came to nothing, though two cars reportedly reached 220 mph during testing.
The auction car, chassis number one, was repainted blue at some stage before a new owner commissioned a full restoration in 2016 back to its original Ivory, a finish that highlights the red leather interior. Centenaires rarely change hands given their scarcity, making the appearance at the Zoute Concours Auction a notable moment for collectors of 1990s exotica.
For all its obscurity, the Centenaire laid down a template that later hypercars would follow. The carbon fibre tub is now standard practice at the highest end of the market, and the car's combination of a large naturally aspirated V12, a manual gearbox and a lightweight composite structure anticipated the priorities of a generation of performance machines. Whether that historical importance translates into a seven-figure result will be settled in Belgium next month.