At a secret location in the south of England is an ordinary looking warehouse with quite extraordinary contents that only a handful of people outside of the McLaren staff has ever had access to.

This warehouse, known simply as Unit 2, has the worlds biggest collection of McLaren cars, including various production models and Formula 1 racers.

But soon, almost half of the cars inside will be moving to a new location.

Whilst other F1 teams such as Ferrari have sold their older cars to fans, McLaren have been holding on to all of its race cars since the early 1980′s when Ron Dennis first took control of the team.

McLaren have been keeping its cars in secure holding but soon they will be going on display at automaker’s dealerships around the world.

Unit 2, at its peak, held around 75 McLaren F1 cars, which over half a century of racing have won the manufacturer over twenty drivers and constructors world championships.

All of the cars at Unit 2 are maintained to a high standard and are in full working condition, even their air intakes still bear the names of the driving greats who drove them, from Senna and Prost to Hamilton and Button.

Around the warehouse is everything the McLaren engineers need to fix the cars, with neatly stacked rows of wheels and tyres, jacks made specifically to fit each design of car, and even outdated laptop computers that are needed to run the software that some of the older cars require.

McLaren is to open 35 showrooms by the end of 2012 for selling its new supercars and every one of these showrooms with have a car from Unit 2 on display once it opens.

In almost all cases, the Unit 2 cars will have a specific link to the location. For example, a dealership in Brussels will get the 2004 MP4-19 that Kimi Raikkonen won the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix in. Ayrton Senna won the 1993 Monaco Grand Prix in the MP4-8, so this is where that will be. James Hunt won the 1976 U.S. Grand Prix in the McLaren M26 and this will be placed in the Philadelphia dealership.