“If you can paint a car in Chrome, I’ll give you a million dollars.”

Lawrence Manning never did get that cheque, but the enthusiasm and excitement from the top brass at McLaren to implement his idea on a Formula 1 car suggested he was onto a winner. Fifteen years on, the Chrome livery is known as one of the most iconic looks of all time, and it all sprung from a side hustle.

Stood in then-McLaren CEO Ron Dennis’ office at the team’s Woking-based headquarters, Lawrence had been ordered to pitch his idea of a Chrome painted McLaren to the team’s hierarchy.

“You wouldn’t want to waste his time,” Lawrence says. “I took a sample with me, and he asked, ‘Where’d you get that from? Where’d you get that?’. I explained and said I thought we could do it on the car. Next thing I know, he’s put me on a flight to California to get it done.”

Many origin stories for the chrome livery have been banded around, of which Lawrence can help us debunk. Some say the inspiration came from a surfboard, others believe it was from a bottle of perfume, and while there is an element of fact to both, neither is true. The eureka moment happened in Lawrence’s home studio.

Lawrence still works for McLaren as a Graphics and Brand artist. He joined the team as an Airbrush Artist in 1997, and his creative background naturally lends itself to several hobbies and part-time work. This includes designing and painting crash helmets, which is how he came across chrome paint.

“I had got hold of some Chrome paint from America and was playing around with it on helmets,” Lawrence recalls. “We had a silver car at the time, and I wondered whether we could use Chrome paint instead. I was sent to America to work with the company that made it and to buy a load of it.

“Whilst we were there in America, they had people from perfume companies trying to buy it for their factories as decorative paint finishes, which I guess is where the perfume bottle story comes from. I told them we were looking to do it on a car, and their response was, ‘that’s big…’

“However, they felt they could do it because we’d be painting the panels separately, not the full car in one go. We would never paint an entire car in one go, it is done in parts. This made a chrome car more realistic, although it did come with the challenge of making sure that the paint on all of the panels matched up.”

Even at that early stage, the team knew that a chrome car would be ground-breaking from a marketing and aesthetic perspective. Such was the level of fear that a competitor would get wind of the idea and produce their own chrome car, Lawrence and a colleague were sent to America in secret, with only those who needed to know, in the know.

They continued to keep their work under wraps when they returned to the UK. And amongst those with knowledge of the project, an element of scepticism remained that it could be achieved.

Lawrence was quietly confident that they’d find a way, but even he admits there was some doubt in his mind.

“We spent a lot of money, and I'd said, ‘yeah, we can do it,’ but I had only ever tried it on something the size of a football,” he continues. “I knew it could be done, and we were all excited to do it, but the worry we had at the time was whether the paint would stick.

“It was being painted onto a really fragile surface, so what if a stone chips our car? Would it come off? It did actually fail at one point: a whole sheet of it came off the car in testing. It was like a snakeskin.”

Ultimately, they found a way. The last thing they needed was Kimi Räikkönen or Juan Pablo Montoya crossing the line with half their paint job missing.

“We used plasma, which stopped it from peeling off,” Lawrence explains. “It was primer, black paint, lacquer, chrome and more lacquer. It was heavy, but the weight wasn’t as much of a thing then, and to be honest, the car and the Mercedes engine was that quick that it didn’t matter.

“Even when the car was unveiled to the press and public, people couldn't believe that you could have a chrome car on the track. They were worried that it would be reflective, and drivers were moaning about the potential for sun glare, but because it wasn’t full chrome, more like a metal ball bearing effect, that wasn’t an issue, and it was accepted.”

Even though they’d achieved their aim, the team weren’t 100% convinced by the result. It worked well and looked fantastic, but it wasn’t perfect. They felt they could do it even better.

It hadn’t been without its hiccups, including these pesky reoccurring black spots. Painting pioneers AkzoNobel came on board in 2008, and with them, we started fresh, attempting to create a more flawless, less problematic version of the chrome paint.

There was also a desire internally for it to be brighter, and even “chromier.” This proved far from simple, or cheap, though. Lawrence continued to be heavily involved in the process, with his knowledge of the paint, its chemistry, and of painting cars and helmets, making him a vital asset.

“It wouldn’t work at first, so my old boss, George, and I travelled to the Netherlands, where they were based,” he says. “I remember looking at the formula, and I could see what was wrong. One of the chemicals in there was clustering the chrome.

“If you look at paint under a microscope, the particles lay flat, whereas if you look at silver or metallic, the particles spike because it includes a binder. The chrome had a binder, and you can’t lay anything flat with a binder in it because the binder sticks the particles together, which coagulates it, which is why the chrome was clustered. If we could take the binder out, then it would work.

“We changed that, and we had it: perfect chrome.”

That it has gone down in history as one of the ultimate F1 liveries of all time justifies their extensive efforts. With the help of AkzoNobel, chrome ran for nearly 10 years, from 2006 to 2015, being driven to 34 victories and a Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship.

But the cars weren’t the only things they chromed… As part of a unique advertising campaign in 2008 featuring Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, Lawrence chromed a surfboard – considerably easier than a car and the source of the surfboard rumour. Even after this, he never did see that million.

But his idea has been immortalised in motor racing history, and you can’t put a price on that.

The car is set to be remembered at this year’s British Grand Prix, with the MCL60 carrying a nod to chrome in partnership with Google Chrome.