Morning Symphony: The 1969 McLaren M6GT – Track Car First, Road Car Second


Morning Symphony: The 1969 McLaren M6GT – Track Car First, Road Car Second

Bruce McLaren’s vision for a racing car was simple: light and brutally fast, with attention paid to aerodynamics. It wasn’t just that the New Zealander could drive his ass off…he could…but he was also a constructor, not an easy feat to move to. From the moment he realized that a fluttering fuel door could be caused by pressure underneath (and after some hackery, found that his lap times decreased), McLaren sought to devote his knowledge as an analyst, engineer and manager towards not only racing, but vehicle manufacturing. He wasn’t quite cutting edge for a manufacturer, but his successes were based on reliability combined with tuning tricks. The McLaren M6A debuted in 1967 as an open-cockpit racer with a Chevrolet V8 designed to rule Can-Am racetracks. It did well before it was retired for the M8A race car, but McLaren, in association with technical partner Trojan, kept the M6 platform around. The M6B was a race car, and this, the M6GT, a car that was supposed to go to LeMans and run in Group 4 racing, something that didn’t materialize. Only a few prototypes were finished, two of which were fitted to be road cars, one of which was Bruce McLaren’s personal car until his 1970 death.

Looking at the M6GT in action at Spa-Francorchamps, you get the connection to both LeMans and Can-Am racing, but if you squint and imagine the machine with number plates, it’s not too difficult to see the genesis moment that would lead to such machines as the F1, MP4-12C and the P1 road vehicles of today, is it?


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