McLaren McL 6GT: a manual gearbox returns, and a production car follows in 2028

McLaren has not put three pedals in a road car since the F1. The McL 6GT, shown at Monterey Car Week on 14 August 2026, brings them back: a manual gearbox driving the rear wheels behind a V8, which McLaren describes as its first authentic manual since the F1 entered production in 1992. For a marque that built its modern reputation on dual-clutch shift speed, that is a deliberate reversal.

Two things need stating plainly, because they change how the car should be read. The McL 6GT is a concept, and McLaren published no power, torque, weight, performance or price figures with it, and no production number — so any figure quoted elsewhere is somebody's estimate rather than the manufacturer's. What McLaren did commit to is a date: a production version arrives in 2028. The car also opens a separate and more exclusive line positioned outside the core range, so the production version will sit alongside the existing portfolio rather than replace part of it.

The argument McLaren makes here is mechanical rather than statistical. The steering is hydraulic. The switchgear is knurled machined aluminum. The gear lever was designed around throw and feel, its linkage left exposed in the console, with a three-dimensional Speedy Kiwi — the first piece of iconography drawn from McLaren's original logo — set into the upright. The throttle is a floor-hinged blade finished in gold, next to a clutch pedal that is the whole point of the exercise.

The car being answered is the M6GT. Bruce McLaren based it on the M6A Can-Am racer and intended it as a road car; he died in 1970 and it never reached series production, which is why McLaren calls it an unfulfilled ambition. McLaren Special Operations assembled a one-off of the original and showed it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed earlier this year. The McL 6GT is the modern reply, and the name deliberately ties McLaren's track history to the beginning of its road cars.

The proportions are the M6A's: very low, very wide, a low nose, and a Kammback tail. The body reads as one continuous volume, the roof running into the rear deck and engine cover, the cabin set into the form rather than on top of it. The M6GT's Racing Loop taillight motif is reworked into the airflow architecture. Bruce McLaren's signature sits on the engine bay, his original M6GT number plate returns as a tone-on-tone graphic, and the Speedy Kiwi is etched into the fuel filler cap. Underneath is a carbon fiber monocoque with carbon fiber bodywork, and exposed gloss carbon runs through the cabin.

Nick Collins, who runs McLaren Automotive, frames the car as a signal of where the company is heading rather than a one-off indulgence. For Thailand that makes it worth watching now rather than in 2028: a first allocation on a car positioned this way is settled through relationships long before an order book formally opens, and there is nothing yet to place a deposit against. We import McLarens to order and quote them landed with duty and tax. If a manual McLaren is the one you have been waiting for, say so now and we will keep you in front of it.