This past Thursday, McLaren Engines in Livonia, Michigan held a party celebrating their 40th anniversary. All current and former employees were invited, and they managed to convince some collectors to bring out a few of their cars. I thought you guys might enjoy the pics.
Some history about McLaren Engines - it started as a place for Bruce McLaren to build his engines for his CanAm cars, instead of shipping them overseas every time they needed a rebuild. A few years after Bruce died, McLaren Cars in the UK and McLaren Engines in the US decided to go their separate ways. Part of the agreement was that McLaren Cars would not produce their own engines, and McLaren Engines would not produce their own cars. This is why the McLaren Formula One team always uses someone elses engines. It's also the reason that whenever McLaren Engines wants to customize a car they have to team up with another company like ASC (ASC/McLaren Mustangs and Capris, the Buick GNX, Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo, etc). Anyways, after the split, McLaren Engines went racing with a number of different companies, like BMW in IMSA GTP (2L 1000hp 4 cylinders), they did the engines for Cadillac's LMP cars, and various other things like Turbo Buicks for Indy, IRL engines, Turbo BBCs for offshore racing. Lately they've been doing a lot of design for high performance production engines, like the cylinder heads for Vipers and Z06 Vettes. Anyways, on to the pictures:
This McLaren M1B is actually street legal. The guy drove it to and from the event.
McLaren M8F
McLaren M20
BMW IMSA GTP
BMW M1
BMW 320 Turbo
Ford Racing 1953 FR100 Panel Van
This van is actually a widened panel van body on a tube frame chassis with a FR500 5L Modular engine. When sorting out the suspension, the Ford Racing guys would split the cost of a track rental with various clubs. They would take great joy in wiping the floor with many high dollar sports cars (Vipers, Z06's, BMWs, Porsches). The way the truck is built it's difficult to see that it has a tube frame chassis, so most of the people thought they were getting beat by an old van.
Ford Racing Focus FR200
The red car is the one that was in one of the mainstream magazines a few years back beating a first generation Z06 around a race track.
Buick V6 Turbo
Cadillac ALMS Twin Turbo V8
Turbo Chevy V8 for offshore racing
McLaren M20 Intakes
There's lot more pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schmidlap1/sets/72157621784933145/
Most of these cars (except the street driven M1B) will be at the Meadow Brook Concours tomorrow if you're in the Detroit area and want to see them and many other incredible cars.
There's more pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schmidlap1/sets/72157621784933145/
Bob
P.S. Let me know if you can't see the pics. I've never posted pics before, so I'm not sure I did it right.
