On the trail of Bruce McLaren

Today McLaren’s home is in Woking, England, but the story started nearly 80 years ago on the other side of the world.

In 1958, a humble New Zealander named Bruce McLaren left his tiny country (its population was around a quarter the size of London’s) and travelled to Europe to race cars. He won his first Grand Prix at the age of 22, and went on to succeed in all kinds of motorsport all over the world, winning races in cars he’d designed and built himself, then bequeathing his name to one of the most successful Grand Prix teams of all time. 

What has since grown to become McLaren Automotive (and the wider McLaren Technology Group) started life with the more antipodean name of Bruce McLaren Racing. And yet the flying Kiwi’s part in the McLaren story is perhaps not as widely known as it should be. Even in his home country, where the multi-talented Bruce first revealed his abilities behind the wheel and with a spanner, he doesn’t always receive the recognition his achievements cry out for.

The entry to the Bruce McLaren Trust is a tiny doorway with a tiddling sign over the lintel, tucked away in the forecourt of a bustling mechanic’s workshop in Auckland – and it seems appropriate that you can smell the oily metallic scents of car innards as you enter. Upstairs, what was a cramped two-bedroom flat is now a museum, crammed with trophies, medals and photos from around the world. All were collected by Bruce who, back in the early 1950s, spent his formative years at this above-the-shop address with his parents Les and Ruth and his elder sister. 

Out of the back windows you can see the yard where, as a 14-year-old with a deep and abiding passion for cars and all their mysteries, he set up his own wild and wooded version of a racing circuit half a world away. His younger sister, Jan, remembers it well: ‘He made up this figure of eight in the back yard, a mini Brands Hatch around all the trees, with a hard-lock turn around the clothes line and a plum tree, then a hairpin around the lemon tree, and back up past the garage – it used to scare the hell out of his uncles, watching him do it,’ she laughs.

Bruce McLaren always seemed to be in a hurry, on racetracks and in life, and perhaps that was because he was making up for lost time. Aged just 10, he contracted Perthes disease in his leg, which meant living in a medical facility – and in traction – for two years. It also left him with one leg noticeably shorter than the other. 

‘From the age of 12 to 13 he had to learn to walk again,’ Jan explains. ‘He came out of Wilson Home for disabled children in Auckland and went straight into high school on crutches, but it didn’t slow him down at all. Once he recovered from it, he just got on with things. He was always just very focused on doing what he enjoyed, and that was always going to be following Dad into racing cars.’



Parked on the forecourt of what used to be McLaren’s Service Station is the impossibly small and spindly Austin 7 workshop ‘hack’ that Bruce learnt to drive in. Climbing into it today, it feels implausibly cramped and spartan. The tiny gear lever sits under your left leg – and if you can imagine trying to type with your toes while sitting in a camp chair, you’ll get an idea of what the pedals are like. Driving it at all would be a challenge; the thought of driving it fast is mind-boggling. ‘Oh yes, they were absolutely tiny those Austins – and you wouldn’t believe the speeds they got up to in them, with tyres no wider than your hand,’ Jan reminisces. 

Around here, nearly everyone knows about Bruce, who is referred to more commonly as ‘a bloody legend’ – though it’s surprising how many young New Zealanders we meet look blank at the mention of his name. It seems strange that a man who raced with Jack Brabham, and who took on both Stirling Moss and Graham Hill, is not as famous as those giants of motorsport are in their countries. Although most are familiar with McLaren the racing team and builder of supercars, many just are not aware of the Kiwi origins. 

The locals, including Bruce’s father, had raced on the beach itself for many years, but one day Les discovered a winding track, and decided it would make a good hill climb. For the event, father and son shared the Austin 7 Ulster they’d built from scratch.

What was once a tree-lined track with stunning ocean views and striking drop-offs is now a winding road lined with armco barriers and beach houses, peopled by buses of tourists sucking up the vistas through their phones. Slicing up what is now Waitea Road, it’s easy to see how its steep, tightening turns would have been an enlivening challenge in the open Austin (which now resides at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England).

‘It was a beautiful spot with magnificent views straight out to sea, but it was a scary, unsealed road – and that’s where Bruce learnt to handle cars moving around on him, in any conditions,’ Jan explains. ‘We’ve got footage of him going up that hill in the dust and you can see the lines and the speed he was going at compared with Dad, even at that point. He started setting faster times than Dad from very early on, and so Dad just stepped back from the racing and became his pit manager.

The next stop is Ardmore Airport, where the first New Zealand Grands Prix were held, and where Bruce took part in his first ever international race some 60 years ago. Jan McLaren now lives nearby, and gets sentimental each time she drives past. ‘He was still very young, just 18,’ Jan says. ‘But from there he went on to win his first Formula 1 Grand Prix aged just 22 – the youngest winner ever at that time – and it all just happened so fast.

‘Him going overseas was a huge thing. It was the first time New Zealand had ever sent a driver to Europe. He was chosen by a board that included Jack Brabham to get a scholarship to go, while he was still at university. He said he’d take a year off and come back, which he did, but only to race, and for Christmases.

The airfield offers a pretty basic set-up: two long straights (otherwise known as runways) joined by slip roads, but this was the home of the New Zealand GP from 1954 to 1962 (Stirling Moss won here three times), and Bruce’s performance here in 1958, at the age of just 21, was enough to catch the eye of Brabham, who helped launch his career.

Six years after that victory, Bruce was killed while testing a new Can-Am car at Goodwood in England. He was just 32 – yet he’d already pondered on the subject of his own mortality in his 1964 autobiography: ‘To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.’

It’s a quote that will no doubt feature prominently at the planned Bruce McLaren Heritage Centre, which it is hoped will be built in the near future. Duncan Fox, a member of the Board of Trustees at the Bruce McLaren Trust, tells us: ‘We’re raising funds to set up a world-class tourist destination, and we’ve approached Weta Workshop [the imagineering house famous for its work on the Lord Of The Rings movies] to give us some ideas. You’ll be able to follow Bruce’s trail, as you’re doing, and we’ll make it as interactive as we can. It’s going to be fantastic.’

If the Heritage Centre comes to fruition, then perhaps – finally – Bruce McLaren will get the recognition his efforts so richly deserve.