McLAREN M6 GT - INTRODUCTION

Bruce McLaren was passionate about both racing and road cars. Not only was Bruce a great driver, but also a highly skilled engineer and designer.

With great determination and ambition he founded his own race team, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing, in 1963. Following success on the race track in both Formula 1 and Can-Am Bruce turned his attention to building a road car.

Bruce wanted McLaren to enter Le Mans in the late 1960’s. The plan was to take an M6 Can-Am car and develop a coupe body that would be competitive in long distance racing. To meet regulations at the time a minimum of fifty cars had to be completed. However homologation problems lead to the project being scrapped.

Having always harboured an ambition to build his own road car Bruce wanted to turn the project into the ultimate road car. He wanted to build the fastest and quickest accelerating car in the world that translated their expertise on the race track, to create the definitive road going sports car.

So in early 1970 Bruce organised for a GT to be built so he could use it on the road in an effort to find out what problems would have to be overcome.

Together with chief designer Gordon Coppuck, Bruce planned to refine the prototype, eventually aiming to produce up to 250 cars per year.

In fact only two M6GTs were ever built, Bruce’s original prototype and a second built by Trojan. The original prototype, OBH 500H, became Bruce's personal transportation, and remained so until his untimely death at Goodwood on June 2, 1970 when the road car project died with him.

The M6GT stands as testament to his passion and vision to enter the world of super sports cars.