Angels Pitcher C.J. Wilson Wants One Car

April 5th, 2013 by Armaan Almeida

Spring has sprung, and Major League Baseball has officially kicked off for the 2013 season! Like other pro athletes, baseball stars are known for their unquenchable sports car addictions, and the bank accounts to support them.

For MLB All-Star and Los Angeles Angels veteran pitcher C.J. Wilson, the driving enthusiast absolutely had to have the world-conquering new 903-horsepower McLaren P1 for his own personal garage. But McLaren only plans to build 375 of them, so finding his way on to the short list of the world’s elite monied road car fanatics wasn’t an easy process. At all.

Already the owner of McLaren’s own MP4-12C sports car as well the ultra-rare Carerra GT and at one time numerous other Porsches, Wilson’s celebrity and pocketbook were not enough to get him special treatment at Ferrari. He vowed to never own a Ferrari again after his experience with buying and owning a 599 GTB Fiorano: “You have to buy a used Maserati, then you can buy a new Ferrari. It was an exhausting process with so many hoops to jump through. I originally wanted a new Ferrari 360 but they wouldn’t sell it me, despite having the cash to drop there and then.”

After growing up in the days when the legendary McLaren F1 was the world’s top-dog supercar, bar none, Wilson contacted McLaren a full 2 years before development on the P1 was even completed. Concerned that his youth and lack of a “diversity of cool cars” were barriers to being honored with the privilege of dropping $1.3 million on a sports car, Wilson was as happy as a kid in a candy store when McLaren placed him on the order list, and says he was the first confirmed buyer in the United States.

Also the owner of a Mazda MX-5 Cup and head of his own privateer racing team, Wilson vows to drive the P1 mercilessly throughout Southern California, as it should be, rather than letting it sit in the garage.