ROAD TRIPPING THE 2020 McLAREN GT BRUCE WAS HERE

IS IT A REAL GT? WE DRIVE FROM SPA TO REIMS, TWO TRACKS WHERE COMPANY FOUNDER BRUCE MCLAREN WAS VICTORIOUS IN THE 1960S, TO FIND OUT.

- ANGUS MACKENZIE

Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium. It’s cold up here on the Raidillon, a biting wind whipping along the Kemmel Straight. The views back down the fearsome Eau Rouge, the most famous corner in modern Formula 1, are frosted with snow. My gaze drifts across to the 2020 McLaren GT—a long, low, luscious bullet designed to crush continents at warp speeds—and I wonder what Bruce would have thought of it.

Bruce was right here 52 years ago, though he would have been too busy to be staring at cars, no matter how gorgeous. You see, on the afternoon of June 9, 1968, New Zealand–born Bruce Leslie McLaren was dancing his neat little orange McLaren M7A around the Spa-Francorchamps circuit en route to victory in the Belgian Grand Prix. Spa would be Bruce’s fourth grand prix win and 21st podium in 79 starts. But it would also be the first victory for a Formula 1 car carrying the McLaren name.

More than a half-century on, McLaren is one of the most storied names in F1 history, having notched up 182 wins, 12 Drivers’ Championships, and eight Constructors’ Championships. The McLaren GT is the product of a company spun off that success: McLaren Automotive will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year.

Bruce would have understood this transformation because when he was killed testing the McLaren M8D Can-Am racer at Goodwood two years later, he also was working on a GT road car of his own—the McLaren M6GT.

The M6GT was little more than a race car made street legal, a coupe body mounted on an M6B Can-Am chassis, with a thundering mid-mounted Chevy small-block providing the motive power. Bruce planned to build 250 units. That plan died with him at Goodwood that day.