CELEBRATING THEIR DIAMOND 60ieth, M1A & N1A with Goodwood - 60 years of racing legend

In 1964, the UK racing world saw recently arrived New Zealander Bruce McLaren taking his design cues from a young American Roger Penske’s sports car creation called the Zerex Special, to produce his own and first McLaren. The M1A sports car designed & built by McLaren had been racing for fellow antipodean Jack Brabham. Penske’s Zerex was originally a 1962 F1 single seater Cooper. It had been crashed in the States and then bought by the already enterprising Roger. It is a puzzle how he persuaded the US race officials that it was indeed a two seater by simply jamming a seat shell into a space next to the centrally seated driver in a slightly amplified cockpit. But that’s what he did. And he cleaned up with after replacing the Climax race engine with a monster V8 initially from Oldsmobile. Wonderful story.

Bruce McLaren then purchased the psudo-sports car replacing the engine with another V8 and set about beating the established Astons, Jaguars and Ferrari sports cars. Smaller sports racing cars had been set up by racers like Jack Bradham’s early BTs, Eric Broadley’s Elvas & Lolas with Lotus’s Chapman not far behind, all wishing to cash in on any opportunity to build & sell replica race cars. As previously outlined, this appealed also to the US race promoters when they witness the ground shaking spectacular V8 two seaters seeing off Europe finest. Yep, they were hooked. Noteably, the rules for the fledgling Can-Am series was almost devoid of rules & regulation to free thinkers were to enjoy field day of outlandish race car design, although it was sadly short lived.