Bruce McLaren was born in Auckland in 1937. As a boy he suffered from Perthes disease, which left one leg shorter than the other and put him in hospital for long periods. His father ran a garage and raced, and Bruce started in his father’s Austin Seven.
He came to Europe in 1958 on a New Zealand scholarship for young drivers and joined Cooper. At Sebring in December 1959 he won the United States Grand Prix, at twenty-two the youngest Grand Prix winner there had then been.
In 1963 he founded his own team, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing. His first sports car, the M1A of 1964, is in this catalogue, along with the M6B of 1968. In 1966 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Chris Amon in a Ford GT40 run by Carroll Shelby’s team. From 1967, McLaren’s orange cars so dominated the North American Can-Am series that it was known as the Bruce and Denny Show.
On 2 June 1970, testing a new Can-Am car at Goodwood, he was killed when a piece of bodywork came loose at speed and the car left the track. He was thirty-two.
The team carried on under his name and became one of the most successful in Formula One history. The road cars that McLaren builds today — among them the F1 and the Senna in this catalogue — trace back to him.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
What he built
Cars in the catalog that carry his work — or his name.
