McLaren Remembers Life of Brilliant Founder

“Fifty years after [New Zealander] Bruce McLaren’s sudden and tragic death in a motoring accident [at Goodwood Circuit in England], the company he started remembers its brilliant, fearless leader,” Tony Davis writes for The Australian Financial Review.

“McLaren was an inspirational character, who overcame severe childhood illness to become a world-beating racing driver, engineer and car maker,” Davis, a motoring reporter for the Review, writes.

“At the end of the 1959 season, McLaren became the youngest person to win a Grand Prix, taking out the US GP in a rear-engined Cooper-Climax. He was 22. He won the Monaco GP three years later, also in a Cooper-Climax.

“McLaren would be 83 now if things had gone differently. When he began in F1, circuits were lined with lamp posts, telegraph poles, stone walls and barbed wire fences …

“[He] also set in motion plans for a road car, and three prototypes of the spectacular M6GT coupe were built.

“‘This was a guy winning Le Mans and winning in one Formula One,’ says modern day McLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt, ‘and he designed the cars and he ran the company. That’s three different jobs.’”

Original article by Tony Davis, The Australian Financial Review, May 27, 2020.