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The McLaren McL 6GT Concept Previews a Stick-Shift V-8 Hypercar for 2028 A manual gearbox immediately separates McLaren’s latest hypercar from most of its potential rivals. It’s difficult for automakers to stand out during the annual Car Week in Monterey, California, where you can’t throw an Amex black card without hitting yet another new supercar or hypercar. 0:00 / 0:00 McLaren managed the feat with the unveiling of its new McL 6GT, a clean-lined concept car with an honest-to-goodness manual transmission. But it’s not just a concept, as the Car Week version presages a production model scheduled to arrive in 2028. Its buyers will be able to snap through the gears just like in the fabled F1, the hypercar whose 1996 GTR version is expected to fetch roughly $35 million during Saturday’s RM Sotheby’s Monterey Auction. Shifty Business The cranberry-red McL 6GT concept seems focus-grouped for Car Week itself, and not just for the wealthy enthusiasts and collectors that haunt the peninsula’s manicured lawns. The manual come-on—a stick tease?—will have car lovers of all ages and incomes Googling the last modern supercars with a clutch pedal aboard. And the McLaren’s six-speed manual transmission seems as good of a way as any for the marque to create separation from a herd of rivals. According to the company, the McL 6GT blends “purity of character with lightweight carbon-fiber construction, V-8 internal combustion power, and for the first time in a McLaren since the legendary F1, an authentic manual transmission sending drive to the rear wheels.” After years of post-Covid financial and sales struggles, McLaren Automotive was acquired in April 2025 by Abu Dhabi’s CYVN Holdings and integrated with the luxury EV startup Forseven. For the past 16 months, executives said, McLaren has mostly stayed quiet, reflecting on its strategies for producing vehicles and better serving its customers. Now that quiet period is ending, with the McL 6GT the first stop on a roadmap of new models. The company seems intent on playing up a history that may not be as familiar as that of, say, Enzo Ferrari’s. Nick Collins, chief executive officer, invoked its eponymous, New Zealand-born founder as being a similar guiding light for making decisions. “We are literally just getting started, and with the maverick spirit of Bruce [McLaren],” Collins said. Ties That Bind The McL 6GT name may read like a vanity plate. But with two extra letters, it reinterprets another seminal McLaren. Indeed, the M6GT that shared the car’s reveal stage was Bruce McLaren’s personal car in the late 1960s, and his ambitious vision for turning his M6A Can-Am racer into a roadgoing car. But McLaren was killed in 1970 at age 32 while testing the McLaren M8D Can-Am car at the Goodwood Circuit. The M6GT project died with him, and it would be another 22 years before McLaren made the transition to the street with the F1. McLaren executives say the new car realizes its founder’s unfulfilled dream, but with six subsequent decades of innovation woven in—including a woven carbon-fiber monocoque that underpins every modern McLaren. “In every case, we asked ourselves, ‘What would Bruce have done?’” said Kemal Curic, the brand’s new chief design officer.