The lead up to the eventual construction of the McLaren M6 GT began well before the success of the M6A, at least in theory, as Bruce McLaren had long desired to build a mid-engine race car augmented by his experiences in the Can-Am competition.
As a project, the mandate was relatively simple – weld a coupe body onto the M6 (A/B) monocoque, make it the fastest car of its kind in the world, then race it in Group 4 of the World Sportscar Championship alongside the big names, such as Ferrari and Porsche.
For the McLaren Motor Racing team’s own M6 GTs, the same engine used in the M6A would be carried over, although Bruce McLaren left the door open for the accommodation of a 7-litre Ford unit. McLaren originally intended to build 250 units of the race chassis per year, of which the majority would be sold to public customers, sans an engine.
However, in order to be homologated for the 1968 season, McLaren would have to satisfy new requirements introduced by the FIA that year, which stated that a minimum of 50 production examples were needed for application into the series. While McLaren was prepared to manufacture more than enough quantity of chassis, they did not intend nor could they afford fitting engines in so many of them.
Unable to meet these demands, the M6 GT program was scrapped soon after – but not before a few prototypes were produced by McLaren and Trojan-Tauranac. Two of these examples would later be converted to be road-legal, of which one would be Bruce McLaren’s personal car.
The Road Car
Bruce McLaren didn’t let the homologation set back deter him from getting an M6 GT on the road, legally. While it wasn’t destined to dominate the world’s circuits, it could still be faster than anything with a license plate before it.
Road-legal, but based essentially on a prototype race-car, the M6 GT had a cramped interior and no real semblance of usability or practicality. But more importantly, it did come with a Bartz-tuned Chevrolet engine and had an estimated top speed of 165 mph, amongst a host of other outstanding features.
While performance was always going to be at the forefront of the car’s overall disposition, Bruce McLaren wanted to use the M6 GT as an opportunity to benchmark future McLaren road cars. In fact, he had a red M6 GT made as a personal car – infamously registered as OBH 500H – which he drove on a daily basis in order to get the reliable data needed for his ongoing research.
With Bruce McLaren’s unexpected and untimely passing in June of 1970, the M6 GT would never see any production numbers on a larger scale. Only a select few other than Mr. McLaren would have the privilege of experiencing the M6 GT, with Road & Track reviewing one of the M6 GT examples in 1974, declaring it ‘the wildest road car’. Another example was also raced fairly extensively by British race driver David Prophet.
Only 4 units of the M6 GT were ever produced – two painted red, another in yellow, and the last finished in the iconic McLaren Orange.
(Supercars.net)
Modelcar:
Year 1969
Constructor McLaren
Scale "1/18"
Type Road Cars
Manufacturer Tecnomodel
Manufacturer number TM1840A
limited 100 pcs
Material: resin
0:00 Showtime
1:59 Full rotate
2:26 Full rotate 2
2:31 Comparison with the real car
2:38 Pictures
3:23 Ending
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