McLaren M2A

The McLaren M2A was a development car built by Bruce McLaren Motor Racing and completed in September 1965, the forerunner of the team's first Formula One car, the M2B. Designed by Robin Herd, it was powered by a 4.5 litre Oldsmobile V8 engine and was used to test Herd's design ideas and Firestone tyres. Its chassis was made almost entirely of Mallite, a composite of balsa wood bonded between two sheets of aluminium alloy, apart from the steel bulkheads. The team initially denied that it was building a Formula One competitor and described the car as purely a tyre test bed. By December 1965 it had completed over 2,000 miles of testing, and a rear wing fitted to it cut lap times by three seconds in a test at Zandvoort in November 1965. The M2A was later sold on to private racers in the United Kingdom and was destroyed by fire in 1969.