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Ground-Up McLaren M1B Recreation Is a Ford 5.7L V8-powered Trip Down Can-Am Lane

The 1960s were filled with firsts for Bruce McLaren. But before the New Zealander got its hands at F1 in ‘66, McLaren tried his luck at sports racing. The M1A-based M1B is one of the cars that put the racing team on the map, an icon that helped Bruce rank third in the 1966 Can-Am drivers’ championship.
McLaren M1B Can-Am recreation 18 photos
Photo: RM Sotheby's
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This M1B isn’t one of the 28 original units, but a factory chassis-based recreation built by marque experts with the correct bits and pieces. It’s expected to fetch $225,000, maybe even $275,000 later this August at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey sale, and that’s not a lot considering the attention to detail that went into making this car ready to tear up the track at full throttle.

The project started in 2008, when the first owner of the car found and bought the chassis in a bid to go historic racing. As fate would have it, the owner convinced McLaren expert Bill Moir to help reconstruct the car. The steering rack, rear axles, transaxle, and left-hand fuel cell were all refurbished before Rick Hamlin’s Restoration shop fitted new body panels to the chassis in 2012.

The next step in the process of bringing the M1B recreation from zero to hero came in the form of the engine. A dry-sump, bored and stroked 348-cubic inch (5.7-liter) Ford V8 equipped with Weber carburetors and Edelbrock aluminum headers, the free-breathing lump develops more than 500 hp.

All that fury is handled by a three-disc clutch married to a Hewland LG500 transmission. The brakes, meanwhile, have been replaced with Wilwood discs and calipers. As for the 30-gallon fuel cell, it now features new foam.

McLaren’s first outright title in the drivers’ championship may not have been brought by the M1B, but the succeeding M6A made Bruce the victor he always wanted to be. And speaking of the M6A, the 1967 Can-Am racing car introduced what was to become McLaren’s signature orange paintwork.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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