SECOND WIND

If you were wondering what had happened to McLaren's top-of-the-line supercar, it's back. But after a facelift and some major engineering that's brought an extra sting to its tail, this time it's called the 750S. PRESTIGE drives it.

- JON WALL

Motoring enthusiasts have several good reasons to revere the name of McLaren, the UK-based car company set up in 1963 by a young New Zealander. A racing driver and self-taught engineer, and a man of great modesty but extraordinary ambition and ability, Bruce McLaren had designed and built his first true racing machine within a year of his company's founding and by 1965 he'd pulled the wraps off his first Formula 1 car.

In the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, McLaren himself drove his own car to its debut F1 win and today the team ranks as the second most continuously active in the sport after Ferrari, as well as runner-up in the number of Grand Prix wins. As for the drivers who've steered its cars to victory over the years, they include Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen, and Lewis Hamilton-and that's just five from a list that reads like a rollcall of many of the sport's greatest champions.

As well as designing and building racing machines, the company founder also wanted to follow the example of rivals such as Ferrari and Lotus by making road cars; in fact, in 1970 McLaren himself was using a detuned GT version of his M6B track car as his personal runabout, though the project was dropped after he was tragically killed while testing at Goodwood circuit. Some 22 years later, that ambition was eventually realised when McLaren revealed its first proper production car for the road in the form of the F1, a visionary three-seat coupe of which slightly more than 100 were made and today it's regarded as one of the greatest motorcars ever built. But it was only after the foundation of McLaren Automotive in 2010 that the brand had a fully-fledged road-car operation under its wing.