When you invest seven figures in securing one of the most exotic, exclusive vehicles ever made, perhaps you just expect that the owner's manual is going to be a work of art. I don't know, I've never been in that position. Every owner's manual I've ever had has ended up stuffed in a glovebox, pages greasy, creased, and torn.

With the McLaren F1, mishandling the owner's manual would be a crime — doubly so after you hear the amount of thought and effort that went into it. Mark Roberts, the man who hand-sketched the artwork for the manual leading up to the supercar's release over 20 years ago, describes the process in a video released by McLaren this week. "We were actively encouraged to make it more and more special," he says.

The McLaren F1.

The books are rare, to say the least: only around a hundred F1s were made, spanning the better part of the 1990s. It was the fastest production car ever made at the time, topping out at 231 miles per hour; to celebrate that mark — still impressive even by today's supercar standards — Roberts illustrated all of the cars dials, displays, and instruments to read "231."

I don't even own a book this nice, much less the car to go with it.