Bruce McLaren was born in 1937 in Auckland, New Zealand and in 1963 founded Bruce McLaren Motor Racing in order to develop and race sports cars alongside his commitment as lead driver in the Cooper Grand Prix team.

While awaiting a delayed flight in Milan in 1988, McLaren Group Chairman Ron Dennis, Director and shareholder Mansour Ojjeh, Technical Director Gordon Murray and Head of Marketing Creighton Brown were discussing how to harness the company’s technical prowess in order to develop its future direction.  

In 1989 a new company, McLaren Cars, was established and in March 1990 an infamous ten hour design meeting was held that resulted in a commitment to build the fastest and best handling supercar in the world.

And so the idea was born for McLaren to branch out from racing, into building cars for the road.