A new V-8, manual, rear-wheel-drive hypercar is coming to compete with the Hennessey Blackbird: the McLaren McL 6GT. It was inspired by an older McLaren with similar characteristics: the 1969 M6GT. Company founder Bruce McLaren used one as his personal car (and grocery-getter). In the video below, McLaren’s chief design officer Kemal Curic gives Jay Leno a closer look at the classic and modern analog machines.
Not surprisingly, the M6GT road car was derived from a Can-Am race car. It was the old version of a hybrid, one that combined European styling with American firepower. Bruce McLaren’s M6GT was a low, curvy, sleek machine with a 370-horsepower Chevrolet 5.7-liter V-8 mated to a ZF four-speed manual transmission. Unfortunately, it was not meant to be: Bruce McLaren died in 1970 while testing one of his company’s Can-Am cars, and only two M6GTs were ever produced.
However, McLaren’s eponymous race team lived on, eventually leading to road cars, such as the legendary F1 of the 1990s and the current portfolio of automotive exotica. The McL 6GT is an upcoming addition to that lineup. Thanks to its low front end, sleek profile, and “Racing loop” taillights, it bears an undeniable resemblance to the M6GT. Like its ancestor, the McL 6GT has a V-8 and a manual gearbox, although the engine has twin turbos and the transmission has six forward speeds.
The McL 6GT is still in the development phase, so Leno didn’t get to drive it, but McLaren’s factory will start on a 500-unit production run in 2028. However, after Leno contorted himself into the cockpit, he did get some time behind the wheel of the M6GT with Curic riding shotgun (on the left side).
As Leno quickly learned, careful steering is required to keep the nose from scraping, and the entire driving experience is purely mechanical. The M6GT may not have made it into full-scale production, but it did shape the McL 6GT, a rare analog creation in the age of a digital divide between man and machine.
