Article: Hollywood Sport Cars McLaren MkI

[Steve Holmes]

These photos I really love. They were supplied by Cris Vandagriff (Chic's son) to current owner of the McLaren, Chad Raynal. They're scans from slides, taken at the Hollywood Sport Cars workshop when the McLaren was first being 'rebuilt'. They've never been displayed before, so we're extremely lucky to see them.

I choose the word 'rebuilt' for this car, when it was being race prepared for the first time. The second photo posted above in the article shows the McLaren as it was supplied to HSC. These photos detail the amount of work Spencer put into every aspect of the car. Whereas most customer McLaren-Elva's were just given a coat of paint and had a small block Chevy dropped in the back, Spencer absolutely went to town, completely stripping the car down, repainting the chassis bright red, before fabricating up the alloy sheet, which was polished.

Spencer's superb looking 289ci appears on its engine stand, and you can see the magnesium cross-ram intake, but check out also the incredible exhaust header work.