Bruce McLaren’s forgotten M6GT returns at Goodwood this year thanks to a painstaking factory restoration by the MSO team.
- McLaren rebuilt the forgotten M6GT using original moulds and intensive archive research.
- Bruce McLaren envisioned the road car decades before F1 transformed supercar expectations.
- Restored one-off debuts at Goodwood where McLaren founder lost his life testing in 1970.
Ask most enthusiasts about McLaren’s first road car and they’ll point to the legendary three-seat F1. They’re only about 25 years too late. Long before Gordon Murray rewrote the supercar rulebook, company founder Bruce McLaren had already dreamed up a road going machine of his own called the M6GT.
The original M6GT grew directly from McLaren’s dominant M6A Can Am racer and was intended to prove the company’s racing know-how could work just as well on the road. Bruce hoped to build 50 examples, but the project never got beyond three prototypes before fate intervened.
Now McLaren Special Operations (MSO) has finished what its founder started. The company has painstakingly recreated the M6GT using original body moulds, historic drawings and archive photographs, along with a period correct small block Chevrolet V8 and gearbox. Rather than modernizing the car, the brief was to recreate Bruce’s original vision as faithfully as possible. It even had help from some of the mechanics who worked on the original.
That attention to detail extends everywhere. The chassis comes from a period M6A racecar, the suspension uses restored original hardware, and even the aluminum rivets were installed by aerospace craftspeople. Inside, there’s a hand turned walnut gear knob, groovy 1970s green carpet, custom vinyl upholstery and a cream white exterior called Colnbrook, named after the factory where Bruce developed his road car ideas.
Headed For Goodwood
The one-off will make its public debut at this month’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, a venue which carries extra significance because Bruce McLaren was killed in 1970 while testing an M8D Can Am racer at the Goodwood circuit. He was just 32 years old. Today, that same circuit hosts the Goodwood Revival, the Festival of Speed’s sister event, making the M6GT’s return especially poignant.
MSO director Jon Simms called the project “a labor of craft and care,” adding that it serves as “a living reminder of Bruce’s ambition to take McLaren beyond the racetrack.” Looking at the finished product, it’s hard not to wonder what might have happened if the M6GT had reached production. The F1 may still have become an icon, but perhaps it wouldn’t have carried quite so much responsibility for starting McLaren‘s road car story.
