1969: What Makes a McLAREN? | Wheelbase | Retro Transport | BBC Archive

Gordon Wilkins and Judith Jackson profile the New Zealand motorsport driver, engineer and executive Bruce McLaren, as his team prepare for the 1969 season.

At the age of thirty-one Bruce McLaren is at the top in the world of motor racing. He was the youngest driver to win a Grand Prix. He started his own racing team three years ago and won the twenty-four-hour race at Le Mans. He won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa last year in a car of his own design. McLaren and his teammate Denny Hulme have also been particularly dominant in the Canadian-American Challenge Cup to the extent that the Can-Am series is sometimes jokingly referred to as "The Bruce and Denny Show".

Now McLaren is Britain's biggest builder and exporter of two-seater sports-racing cars.
What explains McLaren's international success as a designer and driver since he came to England from New Zealand ten years ago?

Gordon Wilkins visits McLaren's Colnbrook factory, where he gets a sneak preview of the new McLaren models for the 1969 season, in various stages of completion - the McLaren M8B Can-Am car, the McLaren M10A Formula 5000 car, and the McLaren M9A four-wheel drive Formula 1 grand prix car. Gordon chats to McLaren designer Jo Marquart, who talks him through the design of the new machine.

Judith Jackson speaks with Phil Kerr, the joint managing director of McLaren, and some of the McLaren engineers about what it is like to work with someone who has such a hands-on approach. Wilkins speaks to Bruce McLaren himself about the advantages and disadvantages of working with a comparatively small team of 35 people, and about how his cautious, conservative approach to design is informed by his role as driver.

Finally, Jackson visits McLaren at his home, and speaks with his wife Pat and daughter Amanda about the reality of living with a globe-trotting race driver. What is it like to live with someone who is away from home for months at a time?


Clip taken from Wheelbase, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 7 February, 1969.





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