A McLaren and a bus? Five supercars that share parts with everyday vehicles

It’s easy to imagine that every single part from that expensive, low-production supercar is tailor-made to suit that specific model, but the truth is that these brands typically borrow parts from mass-produced vehicles from mainstream manufacturers.

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Perhaps the best known example is the Lamborghini Diablo and its headlights, which were first rumoured to be similar to the ones fitted to the Nissan 300ZX and later confirmed by a Diablo owner who removed the headlights and found a Nissan logo.

It’s not uncommon for brands to share small components like this across their range. Little parts that would cost thousands to develop but are readily available to be licensed from other manufacturers help lower the overall cost, as well as the research and development needed to create them.

The high-end manufacturers can be sneaky though. Quite often the components will cost a fortune if spare parts are purchased directly from the brand. Lamborghini is master of this. It is owned by Audi and will often put a premium on spare parts despite being cross-referenced to a lower-spec model within the Audi group.

A YouTuber pointed out in this video he needed specific lug bolts for his Lamborghini Murcielago. He went to the dealer and was charged $US107 each, equalling $US2140 for all 20. The thing is, they were 1mm shorter than the lug nuts found on a vast range of Audi and Volkswagen models, lugs that usually retail for around $8 each.

Just in-case you have a rare, expensive car, here are the strangest examples of cars that share parts so you can maybe save some money on spares in the future.

The DB7 ushered in a new era for Aston Martin; the cars were no longer hand-built and enjoyed increased production numbers in order to reach a wider range of people. Around 7000 DB7s were made, starting with a price tag of £78,500 ($AU153,500).

Surely, with a sticker price of that amount, and a total project cost of $30 million, you’d expect to see a plethora of specially produced components on this V12-powered coupe. That is, until you look closely.

Squint at the tail-lights; you might not be able to recognise them at first as they have trims around their edges, but those are indeed 1989-1994 Mazda 323 Astina tail-lights.

The component sharing doesn’t stop there. The exterior door handles are from a Mazda 323 Estate, the interior door handles from a Mazda MX-5 NA, as are the side indictors.

These cheap-and-cheerful components made their way onto and into the DB7 thanks to being majority-owned by Ford at the time. The Blue Oval also had a 33 per cent stake in Mazda so when it came time to build the DB7, it seemed only prudent to pilfer from Mazda's parts bin.

Lotus is very well known for parts sharing. Many fans of the British marque would know that the brand loves using Toyota power plants, mostly evident in the 1ZZ and 2ZZ engines found in the brand's Elise and Exige models.

However, the component share goes deeper than borrowing an engine. You may not notice unless you are a bit of a Toyota nerd, but the tail-lights on the X180 Esprit are off the European specification Toyota AE86 Corolla Levin without the centre garnish.

Take a close look at the door handles, too. You may recognise them from the universally hated Leyland/Morris Marina. Perhaps the best design element found on the Marina, the handles made their way onto a plethora of Range Rovers, Lamborghinis, Triumphs, and TVRs.

The Lamborghini Murcielago was the first creation for the Italian brand under the stewardship of its new parent company, Audi. And no doubt it wouldn't take too much digging under the skin of the Murcielago to find the famed four-ring logo of the German brand

But, somewhat strangely, if you look at the front and side indicators on the Italian supercar with a sharp eye, you may recognise them from a humble little hatchback.

Angled slightly, it takes a while to realise that these are the same side indicators used on the first generation of Ford Focus.

Perhaps there is a nice little side hustle in scouring your local wreckers for first-gen Focus’, grabbing the side indicators for a lazy fiver, and selling them to Murcielago owners for 20 times the price?

You read that correctly: the famed over-$1 million car when new, and worth over $20 million today, shared components with a bus. And not just any part, but one of the F1's most visible components that form part of its iconic look.

The VDL Bova Futura is everything the McLaren F1 isn't. For starters, it's a bus. But, what links the Futura to the F1 for ever is that it utilised an off-the-shelf set of circular tail-lights, no doubt because they were cheap and readily available. The McLaren sported the same tail-lights but on the F1, they looked spectacular, contributing to that gorgeous and iconic rear end.

The VDL Bova Futura still isn’t a cheap piece of equipment, and while there are no official prices available for their cost new we can speculate based of busses the same size that it would be somewhere the realm of $300,000 to $600,000. Still, that's cheap-as-chips when compared to the cool $20 million you’d spend today on a McLaren F1.

Regardless, we are sure it would’ve made the restoration costs slightly lower for Rowan Atkinson, who crashed his McLaren F1… twice!

Low volume supercars simply cannot get enough of the Mazda parts bin. Perhaps one of the lesser-known examples comes from the Koenigsegg CCX. This was the first car to be mass-produced by the niche Swedish maker of hypercars, a manufacturer now known for breaking multiple production car speed records.

Despite using in-house developed components to build the powerplant for the CCX, which is quite rare for a new brand, Koenigsegg did borrow some parts from the Mazda RX-7.

If you put the back of the Mazda RX-7 FD next to the CCX’s rear end, you’ll notice that they use the same reflectors on the lower part of the bumper bar.

There’s something strangely comedic about Koenigsegg developing a hypercar with a 600kW engine from the ground up only to borrow something as simple as a rear reflector from a humble Mazda.