McLaren M6GT
The backstory to the M6GT—the spiritual predecessor
of the McLaren F1—begins in the late 1960s. Bruce McLaren Racing Team’s McLaren
M1, which used a space frame chassis, was becoming outmatched by the Lola
T70—which was already being built around an “open monocoque” chassis—in the
Can-Am Group 7 class. In retaliation, McLaren and his team then created their
first race car based on a monocoque chassis—the McLaren M6A.
McLaren himself won the 1967 Can-Am Challenge Cup
with the M6A, while teammate Denny Hulme took second. McLaren Racing would soon
introduce the M8A as the evolution of the M6A, but Bruce still had plans for
the M6A which had served him so well.
The McLaren M6GT, a coupe version of the McLaren
M6A, was originally conceptualized by Bruce to compete in the FIA Group 4
class, a step down from the almost unrestricted FIA Group 7 class. Group 4
racing would pit the M6GT against very stiff competition including the likes of
Porsche’s 917 and Ford’s GT40. Entry into Group 4 required homologation in the
form of 50 road going examples produced at a minimum, an undertaking that was
at the time too involving for McLaren and his team.
Bruce instead decided to use the M6A as a basis from
which to build a road car, working in accord with his head designer Gordon
Coppuck. McLaren and Coppuck visited General Motors styling chief Bill
Mitchell, who allowed Bruce to test drive GM’s current range of exotic
vehicles. It was then McLaren and Coppuck realized they were onto something.
Starting with the M6GT’s coupe body
and monocoque chassis taken from the McLaren M6A race car, the British
“garagistas” added a dogleg ZF transmission and a Bartz-tuned 5.7-liter Chevy
V8 in the rear. Weighing about 1600 pounds with 370-hp at 5800 rpm coming from the
mid-longitudinally oriented pushrod Chevrolet LT1, the M6GT could do 0 to
100 mph in about 8 seconds and topped out at around 160 mph.
Bruce’s personal M6GT, “OBH 500H,” finished in red,
is the only prototype completed entirely by Bruce McLaren and his team. The
other two (or possibly three) prototypes were built by Trojan-Lambretta, the
company to which McLaren outsourced the building of his customer’s racing cars.
