MCLAREN M6 REPLICAS MANUFACTURED IN NEW ZEALAND

A Mclaren M6 replica was also manufactured here for a brief time after legendary New Zealand race driver Graham Mcrae returned to this country in the late 1970s and brought with him an unfinished Manta Montage. His intention was to put the car into production and use Fibreglass Developments (FDL) in Fielding to make the bodies. David Harold, the CEO of FDL, had been wanting to build a kitset car for some time and saw the Montage as an excellent way to get into the industry. It took David about a year to dismantle the car and take moulds off the body.

By that time, Graham was once again overseas, working as the chief mechanic for Paul Newman’s Skoal Bandit Racing team. Before leaving, he had sold his share of the Montage to David, who continued to get the car ready for production as a Vw-based kit. He sold the first of those in 1981. By 1984, 37 bodies had been produced. Some would be fitted to an owner-constructed space-frame chassis, but most used the VW floorpan. None of these cars was sold with the rear screen, but David had managed to convince Pilkington Glass in Lower Hutt to manufacture the windscreen.

After production ended with FDL, a further four bodies were produced in Auckland by Kent Taylor-reid. These bodies were fitted to a spaceframe chassis designed and manufactured by Edgar Salwegter. In 2005, the moulds were sold to a buyer in the Netherlands, and production of any New Zealand M6 Mclaren replicas effectively ended.