Monaco's MCA Centenaire had a carbon tub before the McLaren F1
A carbon-tub supercar from Monaco that beat the McLaren F1 by two years
Monaco has produced exactly one car of its own, and it was built around a full carbon-fibre monocoque in 1990. The MCA Centenaire was engineered by Carlo Chiti, powered by a Lamborghini V12, and sold to five people. The first of those five goes under the hammer in Belgium on 9 October.
Broad Arrow sells chassis one at Knokke-Heist on 9 October
The car carries an estimate of €900,000 to €1,200,000 at Broad Arrow's Zoute Concours Auction, held at Approach Golf in Knokke-Heist alongside Zoute Grand Prix Car Week. Around 70 cars are catalogued for the single-day sale, the second edition after the auction house's Belgian debut in 2025, where the headline lot was King Baudouin's 1951 Cadillac. The Centenaire arrives with the original engine supply contract signed between Lamborghini and MCA founder Fulvio Maria Ballabio, plus period photographs from the Sant'Agata factory.
Carlo Chiti spent five years on the Centenaire's carbon monocoque
The Centenaire's structure was developed under Carlo Chiti, who drew the Ferrari 156 Sharknose that won Phil Hill the 1961 title and then walked out of Maranello in 1962 with Giotto Bizzarrini. Chiti spent the next two decades running Autodelta, Alfa Romeo's racing arm, where he designed the flat-12 that later powered Brabham. By the time Ballabio recruited him, Chiti was an engineer who had spent his career solving racing problems, and a carbon tub in 1990 was a racing answer applied to a road car. Double wishbones sat at both ends.
The Jaguar XJR-15 arrived the same year, 53 times over
Claiming the first carbon-fibre road car is harder than the Centenaire's story makes it sound. JaguarSport finished the first XJR-15 prototype in July 1990 and built 53 of them by 1992, each sold at £500,000 and each made entirely of carbon fibre. The Centenaire was completed in May 1990 and shown in Monaco that August, so the Monegasque car is genuinely first by a matter of months. What it cannot claim is scale: five cars against 53, and both were overtaken in the public imagination by the McLaren F1 in 1992.
A 455 hp Countach V12 and a ZF six-speed manual
Power comes from the 5.2-litre quattrovalvole V12 Lamborghini built for the Countach 5000 QV, rated at 455 hp and sent to the rear wheels through a ZF six-speed manual. Lamborghini supplied the engines under contract rather than as a partner, which is why the paperwork matters to bidders. The same factory then kept this car at Sant'Agata for roughly ten years before handing it back to Ballabio in the early 2000s. It reappeared in blue at Rétromobile in 2007 and was restored around 2016 to its original ivory white over red leather, the colours of Monaco's flag.
MCA planned 100 Centenaires, built five, then went racing
Ballabio wanted a hundred cars and a Monegasque marque to stand beside the Principality's Grand Prix. The recession of the early 1990s ended that after five, a failure rate that would be familiar to any small European supercar maker. MCA then did what a racing team would do with unsold stock: a Centenaire V12 won its class at the 1993 6 Hours of Vallelunga, and two cars were converted into the MIG 100 for a Le Mans entry the same year. Aixam Mega bought the company in 1995, fitted Mercedes V12s to Centenaire-derived cars, and later handed it back to Ballabio, who still runs it.
AutoNext Take
Counting the carbon-fibre road car from 1992 is a habit rather than a fact, and this sale is a chance to correct it. Chiti finished the Centenaire's monocoque in May 1990, TWR finished the XJR-15's in July, and the McLaren F1 that gets the credit was two years behind both. What separates them is not engineering but distribution: Jaguar had dealers, McLaren had Gordon Murray and a Formula 1 badge, and MCA had a founder in Monaco with a supply contract for twelve cylinders. The Centenaire was right about the material and wrong about the decade, and being right early is the better half of that trade.
Broad Arrow's estimate is the part worth watching on 9 October. €900,000 is roughly what a good Countach 5000 QV commands, which prices the Centenaire as a Lamborghini engine in an unusual body. Clear €1,200,000 and the room is paying for Chiti's monocoque and the 1990 date instead, which would be the first time anyone has. Five cars is not a production run by any honest measure, but it is enough to make the point that Monaco built something real, once, and got the hard part right.
