McLaren's McL 6GT revives Bruce McLaren's 1969 daily driver, in 500 examples

McLaren has unveiled the McL 6GT, a carbon-fiber-bodied grand tourer limited to 500 examples. The car debuted as one of the highlights of August's Monterey Car Week, a month after a one-off rebuild of its inspiration appeared at July's Goodwood Festival of Speed.

The inspiration is the M6 GT, the road car Bruce McLaren designed in 1969 on the back of his young racing team's success in the Can-Am series. Asked about his ambitions, he said he wanted "a civilized version of one of our racing cars… some way down the line, I think it's bound to happen."

The original plan called for 25 street-legal M6 GTs, later raised to 50 examples to satisfy FIA requirements. Production never began. McLaren died at 32 during testing at Goodwood in 1970, and the road car died with him.

His name carried on through the marque, and the McLaren F1 of the 1990s is described as the supercar nonpareil, though an outlier. McLaren Special Operations, the bespoke division, rebuilt the M6 GT as a one-off for July's festival, and that car was teeing up the McL 6GT.

A daily driver with a manual gearbox

Chief design officer Kemal Curic says the team wanted to go back to the beginnings, because there was an untold story in the unfulfilled dream. "Even before joining McLaren, I thought that [the M6 GT] was absolutely stunning, beautiful, and ahead of its time," he said.

Curic describes the original as exuberant for its time, something that could be described in two or three lines, and that was the motivation for the new car. By his account Bruce McLaren drove his red M6 GT to pick up groceries; it was meant to be his daily driver.

The new car is similarly lean and pure of surface. Curic and his team dialed down the caricature and delivered elegance, with plump curves on the wheel arches, straightforward but strong graphics, rear lights that stand out, and good proportions overall.

The shape is less obviously in hock to downforce or to the cooling demands that govern other McLarens. Like Alfa Romeo's limited-series 33 Stradale, it has echoes of simpler times: an old-school manual transmission, three machined pedals in the footwell and a gearshift cradled in a skeletonized mechanism.

Curic argues that the original had "no empty calories." Before McLaren he spent a long stint at Ford, where he steered the visual destiny of the Mustang, and he now works with David Woodhouse, the newly appointed chief creative officer, to reshape McLaren's design thinking and brand identity.

A bridge to McLaren's luxury turn

Curic calls the McL 6GT more of a bridge between old and new, and a powerful messenger that change is coming fast at McLaren. The company is also strengthening its position in the United States, which he calls its largest market.

"Performance is something we know well," Curic said. "Now we're going into the luxury space, and the luxury will come with the execution. That's why the McL 6GT focuses on tactility and materiality."

The move follows ownership turbulence and a financial restructuring. Abu Dhabi's CYVN Holdings bought McLaren Automotive in December 2024, according to our guide to British car brands, and the company's once technocratic approach is now tempered by a strong sense of history.

Chief executive Nick Collins alluded to Bruce McLaren's "maverick spirit." The new model, in this telling, succeeds because it remembers to be something many contemporary hypercars no longer are: beautiful.

Price is the open question. In our ranking of the most expensive cars, the McLaren Speedtail is at $2.25 million, while the $142 million Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe tops the list. McLaren has given no figure for the McL 6GT.

As of press time, the production version's performance specifications and price have yet to be announced. McLaren says only that 500 examples will be made, so buyers will wait for the numbers that decide where the car lands.