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It's arguably the best convertible super car money can buy right now, but today I'm not driving The the McLaren 570S Spider so I can talk about it's 562 brake horse power or it's 443 pounds feet of torque or it's zero to 60 time of three point one seconds.
I'm not gonna talk about how well it handles, how good the brakes are, and they are very good.
Or any of that stuff.
Today, I'm gonna talk about something that's a bit more obvious about this car in particular.
And for that, I'm going to have to get out.
Because I'm going to talk about the color of this car, Honestly, the 570S Spider looks great in pretty much any paint job, but there's something about this car in particular that's noteworthy.
It's a shorthand that covers McLaren's very origin and heritage, and pulls together 60 years of automotive history.
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Now, to you, the color of this car may seem extremely light blue, or a blueish white But special operations call this [UNKNOWN] and, to McLaren, that's more than just the color.
It's a connection to their past.
Wrapped up in this paint job is a story of triumph and loss, family and innovation, and at the heart of it all, one of motor sports greatest heroes.
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[SOUND] But to tell this story, we're gonna start at the end and work our way back to the beginning, and the end is here, the McClaren 570S Spider.
Now that company, that incarnation of McClaren has only been going since 2010.
But it all comes back to the McClaren race.
Racing team, that company was bought by Ron Dennis in the 80s.
Now although he's been one of the most influential people at McLaren, it's not his name on the company.
[UNKNOWN] Not named McLaren belongs to the one and only Bruce McLaren.
Bruce McLaren died in 1970, while testing the latest of the McLaren Can Am race cars.
The 7 1/2 liter, 670 break horsepower, V-8 powered car was hugely reliant on his arrow And when the rear body work came away while testing the car at Goodwood, the car became unstable and crashed.
Bruce was only 32 years old, and left behind his wife Peggy and daughter Amanda.
And his death denied the world someone who bridged the gap between driver and engineer in a way no one else had arguably done before.
Or since.
The fact that he was so young only underscores how much he had achieved in such a short time.
By 1970, he had Formula One wins with Cooper and them all won in Ford GT 40.
That absolutely dominated Can Am racing.
But more than that, the racing team he set up had the momentum to go on and become one of the most successful and lasting names in Motorsport and even as early as the 60s, McLaren had its eye on building a road car.
Canon was just one of the Motorsport series that McLaren took part in.
Bruce McLaren really wanted Spread his wings and try his hand at a huge variety of racing types.
While trying to get a car homologated to take part in group four racing, the M6GT was developed.
And it's part of the entry rules for that you needed to get the car homologated an actual car is produced and sold to the public.
The result was technically the first ever road car that McLaren made.
Not the McLaren F1 But the M6GT.
It wasn't just going to be any road card.
Bruce wanted it to be the fastest and quickest accelerating road car in the world.
It would be extremely low to the ground, mid-engine and with a top speed of 165 mph and a 0 to 60 of eight seconds.
It certainly would've beaten anything else out on the roads.
Unfortunately, McLaren couldn't get the project off the ground, and only a few were ever made.
Bruce though, used one as his daily driver.
It would be over 20 years before McLaren built another road car, but when they did, the F One was everything Bruce would have wanted.
In fact although we can't really say for certain what Bruce would have thought of the road cars that McLaren is building today.
I don't think it's a far leap to think he would be pretty proud to have his name on the nose of cars like this The company that developed all of those cars were set up by Bruce in 1963.
And he didn't just set that up on a whim.
He had a innate ability to shape the cars that he drove, going all the way back through Brabham and Cooper, the companies he raced for when he first moved to the UK.
All the way back to very first racing cars back in his native New Zealand, he was never happy just to drive the cars as they were.
He would tinker, he would change, he would modify to get that racing edge, and it was that mentality that led him to starting the McLaren racing team.
He knew that he could build a better car, and he You sure could.
But that move to the UK came after his appearance in the New Zealand grand prix in 1958, although not competing in Formula One.
At that race, Formula One and Formula Two cars competed at the same time.
at that 1958 race he made such an impact that he was given the opportunity to come over to Europe to join the big [UNKNOWN]
But back to the color of the car, how does it tie to our story?
Bruce McLaren and his family lived in [UNKNOWN] in the UK.
And their home was named Muriwai house.
The color of the house was white with blue doors and is that from which this car's color gets its name.
But obviously what's a miroi?
Well considering that the weather is looking like it's not going to hold for very much longer and we're so close to the coast, and I fancy an ice cream maybe it's time to pull in.
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At the age of 15, Bruce entered and won his first ever race, and the location for that?
The coastal town of Muriwai.
Now we couldn't afford to fly all the way down to New Zealand to film there.
So, In an effort to find a rugged, robust coastal town in The UK, we've come here to The Isle of Wight.
But there's one more location we can go to that takes the beginning and the end of the story and matches them perfectly together.
I might finish my ice cream first though.
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That 1958 race was only a handful of year since Bruce had first stepped into a racing car at all.
In fact, his entire career is remarkably dense with experience and influence in such a short period of time.
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It was only 12 years from his first bake professional win to his untimely death and in that time he established a lasting legacy.
It had incredible humble beginnings though and it all comes back to one car.
And that's the car we're on our way to see now.
To find that car, we're heading back to the new home of Mclaren.
Only a few miles away from Millway House of Mclaren technology center in Walken.
This pristine UFO light building always strikes me as if it's landed here rather than being built.
And it's not only home to Mclaren remote cars To the F1 team.
And as soon as you walk through the door there's a collection of some of the racing cars that made McLaren great.
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As gorgeous as they are though.
I'm here to see something a bit different.
Bruce's dad Les McLaren had bought a 1929 Austin 7 in bit with the intention of restoring it and selling it on a young Bruce though had other ideas on wanted to take it racing.
Too young to race himself, he entered his first race in 1954 at the age of 15 under his dad's name, and won.
It set Bruce not only on the path to becoming an amazing racing driver, but his curiosity and innovation helped him learn how to modify and improve his car.
It's said he never raced this car in the same setup twice.
Everything that Bruce McLaren himself and the company that bears his name has achieved started with this car and a race in a town called Muriwai.
Today, over 60 years on, the McLaren name is on this amazing building and on every car that the men and women inside produce.
The world may have lost him way too soon.
But thanks to the cars that still bear his name, he'll never be forgotten.
