One of the perks of being located at the track is that we get to see some amazing machines cruising around on a daily basis. Yesterday the boys across the street parked this McLaren Can-Am car out front and were giving it a bit of a tune up.
Every time they fired it over it sounded like the apocolypse.

I'm not a Can-Am expert but I believe this is a McLaren M6A (possibly B). The M6 chassis type (not this exact car) won the '67 Can-Am championship driven by Bruce himself---just before the massive wings came into play. I think this particular car may have been piloted by a guy on my top five greatest racing names of all time list: Lothar Motschenbacker, in 1968.

Either way these vehicles were amazing:
-Weight: roughly 1700lbs

-Power: mid-mounted 6 liter Chevy V8 pushing out over 580 horsepower
through a Hewland gearbox.

-Chassis: Bonded/riveted magnesium and aluminum alloy box sections welded to square steel tubes.

-Body: fiberglass

-Fuel pods on both sides of the driver and one under the drivers knees.

I had the pleasure of talking to an original Can-Am driver one time and he told me that driving a Can-Am car was like trying to drive a car with a raw egg between your foot and the accelorator, except that if you break the egg you crash. Any movements that even approached not being silky smooth and the car would wreck, with you in the middle surrounded by gas tanks. At their peak the Can-Ams were actually faster than the Formula one cars of the same era.

Those guys had some serious guts (check out the dinky roll bar).
Sorry for the long post but thought some of you might enjoy it.

Pics aren't great:







-Bill@WORKS

 

Very cool, thanks for posting those pictures.

 

hmmmm mach 5 much lol i see where speed racer got it inspiration from . . . pretty cool find man

 

Makes me think of the 917's of the era. Something like 1200-1500 pounds, and over 1,000hp in at least one of the models. And this was the 1960's!
I was told Can Am cars evolved to the point where they were using snow mobile (IIRC) motors under the car, driving fans to suck the things down even more. The corner speed they must of carried is un-imaginable. The guys that were driving the things.... as you wrote, fuel tanks (not even cells IIRC) surrounding them, the ****ty restraint systems, and roll bars.... I would give a ******** to drive one of those cars around a track, but at full-tilt.. I can't imagine the size of the ***** those guys must of possessed. I'd love to see what one of 'em with modern race rubber mounted up, would run around Willow. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ran under a minute.

 

Back then drivers were like fighter pilots- they were replaceable.

 

Sexy.

 

Nice shots. Here in Denver, there's a guy who has a collection of some of the McLaren cars with the big wings from the same era (Matthews Collection). They are cool to get to drool over in person, much less get to hear one fire up. I'm jealous!

Dave

 

I watched those cars run around Mosport when I was a teenager. Still have some slides of them somewhere...