There are many ways to announce that you have no intention of behaving like everyone else. McLaren has chosen a particularly good one: build a V8 supercar, give it a manual gearbox, send power to the rear wheels and then base the whole thing on an unfinished dream from the 1960s.

Meet the McL 6GT, unveiled at Monterey Car Week 2026 and inspired by Bruce McLaren’s original M6GT. If you were expecting another hyper-digital, hybridised speed machine that does everything for you while quietly rearranging your internal organs, this is rather different.

The McL 6GT is all about the bits you actually get to operate. There is hydraulic steering, wonderfully tactile switchgear and, most importantly, a proper manual transmission. Not paddles pretending to be a gearbox. Not a computer deciding when you have had enough fun. An actual gear lever.

And McLaren has clearly been having fun with the details. The lever features a three-dimensional Speedy Kiwi, while the design itself borrows heavily from the M6GT, with its extremely low nose, wide stance and Kammback rear. The cabin appears almost buried inside the bodywork, giving the car the look of a racing prototype that somehow escaped onto the road.

Underneath all this nostalgia is thoroughly modern engineering. The McL 6GT uses a carbon-fibre monocoque and carbon-fibre bodywork, keeping weight down while providing the sort of performance McLaren tends to regard as a basic human right.

But the really interesting part is what it represents. McLaren says a production version will arrive in 2028, positioned above its regular and expanded model ranges as a highly exclusive supercar.

And frankly, a lightweight V8 manual McLaren inspired by a 1960s racing dream sounds like exactly the sort of madness the modern supercar world could use.