STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
The MP4-12C ignited Mclaren’s production ambitions, but the project owed everything to two legendary road cars that came before it: the groundbreaking 1995 F1 and the machine that started it all, the 1969 M6GT.
As a constructor, Mclaren’s greatest early successes came in the musclebound Can-am series. The team walked the championship in both 1967 and ’68, and a year later swept to victory in all 11 races with the fearsome M6B, closing out the top three places in two of those with Bruce Mclaren himself, Denny Hulme and Mark Donohue behind the wheel.
Mclaren’s next target was endurance racing success, and to homologate the M6B for use in the World Sportscar Championship a fabulous prototype was built. Low, light and blisteringly quick, the M6GT was powered by a Bartz-tuned 350cu in Chevrolet V8 that could propel the svelte supercar to 100mph in just eight seconds, and on to a top speed in excess of 165mph. A change in homologation rules demanding that a total of 50 road cars be built put paid to the project, but Bruce Mclaren continued to run one of three prototypes as a road car until his tragic accident at Goodwood in 1970. It’s thought he drove to the Chichester circuit in OBH 500H on the morning of the fatal crash.
The spirit of the M6GT lived on in the technologically advanced F1, when designer Gordon Murray proposed his concept of the ultimate driving machine to Mclaren boss Ron Dennis. The car that followed stayed true to the principles of light weight, high power and race-derived technologies that marked out the M6GT. One of the first production cars to use a carbonfibre monocoque chassis, the F1 weighed just 1138kg yet boasted 618bhp from its 6064cc BMW V12 powerplant – good enough, when combined with its slippery Peter Steven-spenned bodywork, to make the 240mph Mclaren the fastest car in the world.