The reported price of the team: a nominal pound, in a management buyout led by Ross Brawn, with Honda covering redundancy and wind-down costs.
Honda leaves
Honda announced its withdrawal from Formula One on 5 December 2008, citing the global financial crisis.
The Brackley operation employed around seven hundred people. The 2009 car was already well advanced, because Honda had abandoned development of its 2008 car early to concentrate on it.
No buyer
The team was offered for sale over roughly three months. Several parties examined it. None completed.
The management buyout was concluded in early March 2009, weeks before the season opener.
The engine
Without Honda there was no power unit. A Mercedes engine was adapted into a chassis designed around a different installation, in a matter of weeks.
The car appeared at pre-season testing in plain white livery, without a title sponsor.
The diffuser
The 2009 aerodynamic regulations were rewritten to reduce downforce. Brawn, Toyota and Williams independently identified a wording that permitted a double deck diffuser producing substantially more rear downforce.
Rival teams protested. The FIA International Court of Appeal ruled the designs legal on 15 April 2009.
The season
Jenson Button won in Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Spain, Monaco and Turkey: six of the first seven races.
Once the rest of the field adopted the diffuser concept, Brawn's advantage disappeared. Button did not win again after Turkey.
He secured the drivers' championship at Interlagos with fifth place. Brawn GP won the constructors' championship, with Rubens Barrichello taking two victories.
The end
Mercedes-Benz acquired a controlling stake in November 2009. The team became Mercedes GP for 2010.
Brawn GP contested one season, seventeen races, and won both titles. No other constructor has won the championship in its only year of existence.
What came after
The Brackley factory, under Mercedes, won eight consecutive constructors' championships from 2014 to 2021. Ross Brawn stayed until 2013.
Why it goes on a wall
Because the interesting part is not the fairytale. It is that the people who knew the car was good were the only ones willing to buy it, and they were right.
The team nobody wanted.