Odds are you're never going to own the greatest sports car ever made, the new McLaren P1. Or drive it. Or even see it in the flesh. The British auto maker promises to build no more than 375 surpassingly brilliant, end-times road machines, more noble than erotic, and it has already promised them all for $1.2 million or thereabouts. In due course, most of these cars will be loaded onto jitneys and shipped to Russia, China and the Middle East, there to fill the coffers of some lovely people, I'm sure.

Some few buyers will use...