McLaren's new MCL 6GT is a manual transmission supercar inspired by Bruce McLaren's 1969 road car. The company plans to do a small production run of around 500 customer cars, set to roll out starting in 2028. The GT has a carbon fiber monocoque and bodywork, and while the company is planning a V-8 engine for it, no more information on the powerplant is yet available. But the M6GT will be McLaren's first manual transmission automobile since the F1 of 1992.
The new car's origin story is as engaging as the vehicle itself, as the company has mined its heritage in an effort to supercharge its future. In 1969, Bruce McLaren built a swoopy road car that he drove as his personal vehicle, and he planned to build a network of partnerships and bring out a production run of customer cars. He called this vehicle the M6GT, and photos abound of him driving the thing, which was painted a shade of red as loud as the vehicle's small block Chevy engine.
View Price on AmazonToday, McLaren calls this 1969 supercar "the genesis of McLaren road cars." Bruce McLaren did not live long enough to see his dream of a production run come true. Now, the company has revived it and built a new car inspired by his original vision. "I knew of the original M6GT," says McLaren Automotive chief design director Kemal Curic, who started at the company just six months ago, after this project had already started. "This was the car that started it all. This was the first dream for Bruce McLaren, that he wanted to create a roadgoing racecar, super-functional, the most comfortable race car for the road, and he was extremely ahead of his time.
For maximum impact, McLaren debuted the new car next to Bruce McLaren's original road car, along with 1968 engineering blueprints of what would have been the production car decades ago. Sitting on a dais together, the two machines clearly look like father and son. The MCL 6GT's headlights are inspired by the original, as is the red paint, which one company official simply called "Bruce's Red." Both cars feature dihedral doors. Both have blades built into the bodywork at the back of the doors. Both share the same taillight design and placement of the dual exhaust pipes in the back.
Source: roadandtrack.com
