Top 10 Can-Am cars

The cars of the first Canadian-American Challenge Cup, run from 1966 until 1974, were some of the most dramatic machines to hit a race track. The no-holds-barred ethos encouraged mighty, big-engined sportscars and plenty of innovation.

As we celebrate 60 years of the birth of Can-Am for Group 7 racers, we pick out the category’s greatest cars.

For this list, we’ve looked at each car’s level of success, the opposition they faced and their impact on the series. And, for such exotica, it also seems right to include a certain X factor…

10. Shadow DN4

Watch: Top 10 Can-Am Cars | Autosport Retro

Wins: 4
Poles: 4
Fastest laps: 5
Title: 1974

Shadow had threatened the Can-Am frontrunners before but it wasn’t until the 1974 season that the team finally came to the fore. Fuel restrictions effectively banished the turbocharged Porsches, while the factory McLaren team had left at the end of 1972, so it was against a much weaker field that Tony Southgate’s DN4 scored four wins from five races.

Nevertheless, Shadow – which had toiled in Can-Am for several seasons with little reward and even tried turbocharging – was head and shoulders above the rest, with Jackie Oliver scoring four wins on his way to the title by 37 points from team-mate George Follmer.

Perhaps the race that gives the 8.1-litre Chevrolet-engined DN4 more credibility was the penultimate round at Mid-Ohio, when Penske wheeled out the old 917/30. At a circuit on which the turbo Porsche was just about able to make it on the fuel restriction, Brian Redman ran with lower boost and used conservative gears for certain corners.

He still beat Oliver and Follmer to pole but the trio put on a fine battle come the race. A furious Follmer went off after contact with his team-mate, but Redman also had a minor off as his tyres wilted and Oliver came out on top.

And so the Shadow beat the neutered Porsche, but the DN4 failed to match most of the 917/30’s lap times: none of Mark Donohue’s 1973 pole times were beaten, though the Shadow did take two race lap records.

Aside from Mid-Ohio, it’s the limited opposition that prevents the fine DN4 from climbing higher on this list. Third in the points was Scooter Patrick in a McLaren M20 from 1972 and fourth was Bob Nagel in a Lola T260 that was three years old.

9. Chaparral 2E

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Wins: 1
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 2
Titles: 0

We really wanted to put the 2J ‘sucker’ here, a fan car that predated the Formula 1 Brabham BT46B by nearly a decade. Vic Elford qualified 1.8 seconds (around a one-minute lap!) quicker than anyone else at Laguna Seca in 1970, having been 1.26s clear at Road Atlanta, and the car threatened to make everything else obsolete. But it never delivered on its promise before being outlawed.

Chaparral should have won more races in Can-Am. The innovation and engineering apparent in Jim Hall’s cars were first rate and embodied the spirit of a category with ‘no rules’. Unlike the 2J, the 2E was an attractive racing car – and it was a winner. It was also Hall’s favourite to drive.

Even rival Bruce McLaren described the 2E as “undoubtedly the best car” during the 1966 campaign. “We should have been able to foresee that the Chaparrals would have an immediate weight advantage with their aluminium Chevy engine, which weighs some 200lbs less than our cast iron engines,” he continued in Autosport.  

But it wasn’t all about the 5.4-litre powerplant, nor the automatic gearbox. The lightweight 2E had a high-mounted rear wing to produce downforce – ahead of F1 again – and was quickest in practice four times in six events, even though it only got to start from pole twice thanks to bad luck and bizarre procedures.

After missing the first round, Phil Hill took a fourth, a second and then victory at Laguna Seca to launch himself into 1966 title contention. Team-mate Hall completed a 1-2 and took two poles, yet the final two rounds got away from Chaparral.

Hill retired early at Riverside thanks to fuel starvation, a problem that afflicted the unfortunate Hall as he battled McLaren for the lead. Hall nursed his car to second and started the Stardust finale from pole. But both cars had spoiler trouble and Hill had a clash with Parnelli Jones on his way to seventh. Hill and Hall thus finished fourth and fifth respectively in the standings.

The 2G, one of the 2Es fitted with a big-block seven-litre Chevy engine, was one of McLaren’s closest rivals in 1967 and scored four podiums in two seasons. It was also the car Hall was driving when he suffered a serious crash at Stardust at the end of 1968, which effectively ended his driving career.

8. McLaren M8A

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Wins: 4
Poles: 6
Fastest laps: 3
Title: 1968

Due to F1, advance work on the M8A was not as extensive as on the M6A. Just over 10kg lighter than its predecessor, McLaren’s 1968 factory entry was fitted with an all-alloy seven-litre Chevy V8 with an estimated 100bhp more than the 5.9-litre engine in the M6A. The engine was also now a stressed part of the chassis, following F1 practice established by Colin Chapman’s Lotus 49, and the car was lower and wider.

Penned by Jo Marquart and Bruce McLaren, the M8A continued the team’s domination of Can-Am and took pole for all six 1968 rounds, despite engine problems early in the season. Denny Hulme took three victories on his way to the title, Bruce won once and there were two 1-2s, though the M8A lost twice.

The first defeat came in round two when both cars hit engine trouble. That allowed Mark Donohue to win in Penske’s customer M6B. Then, at a wet Laguna Seca, an inspired John Cannon used his Firestone rain tyres to thrash the field in his ancient M1B, with Hulme second and McLaren fifth, both having stopped for a new visor or goggles.

Bruce McLaren did observe the relative lack of opposition, which helped the team get away with some of its early problems, but it was still an impressive campaign. We’ve perhaps been a bit harsh with the M8A’s position given it was a very close relative to a car in our top three…

7. Lola T70

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Wins: 6
Poles: 4
Fastest laps: 3
Title: 1966

Eric Broadley’s T70 was already a Group 7 frontrunner when Can-Am was born and the Mk2 won the first three races of 1966. Victories for Surtees and Donohue, with more traditional Chevrolet power, book-ended a Bridgehampton win for Gurney’s Ford-engined Lola on a rare day his rapid car held together.

Despite challenges from McLaren and Chaparral, T70s won all but one of the six rounds. When Surtees took victory at the Stardust finale, he clinched the inaugural title, ahead of Donohue in Penske’s T70.

Tweaks kept the T70s near the front in 1967 but McLaren’s new M6A had moved things on. Surtees again won at Stardust when the McLarens retired and secured third in the championship, one spot ahead of Donohue, but the T70’s best Can-Am days had been and gone. It had, however, been a key customer car for those early grids.

Lola continued to threaten over the next few years and Jackie Stewart was McLaren’s closest challenger in 1971 with the T260, but Broadley’s designs were never able to secure another crown in Can-Am’s first era.

6. McLaren M8D

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Wins: 9
Poles: 7
Fastest laps: 7
Title: 1970

Perhaps the archetypal Can-Am McLaren, the M8D continued the team’s domination of the series but it was not a smooth ride. Bruce McLaren was killed testing an M8D at Goodwood when the rear bodywork came off ahead of the season. Gurney stepped in initially as Hulme recovered from burns to his hands from an Indianapolis fire, before being replaced by F5000 ace Peter Gethin.

The car, which had a wider track than its M8B predecessor, also suffered overheating problems with its enlarged 7.6-litre Chevy V8s and McLaren swapped back and forth between it and the previous seven-litre unit before it cured the problems.

“While the cars are not perfect, they are the best cars,” was how Autosport reporter Pete Lyons described the M8Ds at the season finale. That was indicative of how the model didn’t carry with it the serene supremacy of previous McLarens but nevertheless got the job done.

The opposition was largely in disarray in 1970 and yet McLaren had more chinks in its armour compared to the year before, scoring ‘only’ two 1-2s in 10 rounds and even hitting enough misfortune at Road Atlanta to allow Tony Dean’s Porsche 908/2 to take victory!

Thanks partly to the ban on the high rear wings, the M8D struggled to match the lap times of the M8B. At only one track (Mosport) did it qualify faster than the 1969 pole times and the M8D was beaten to top spot three times, twice by Chaparral and once by Lola.

Nevertheless, the M8D still won nine of the 10 races and Hulme duly racked up his second Can-Am crown with six successes. That was just reward for a team that had picked itself up after the huge blow of losing its popular leader.

5. McLaren M6A

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Wins: 5 (+1 for M6B)
Poles: 5
Fastest laps: 6 (+1 for M6B)
Title: 1967

The car that really started McLaren’s domination of Can-Am. Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon had been competitive with the team’s M1Bs in 1966 but not quite pulled off a win. The M6A, a monocoque as opposed to its predecessor’s spaceframe chassis, changed all that. The team even started doing its own engines.

Now orange instead of red and with Hulme replacing Ferrari-bound Amon, the M6A arrived at the 1967 Road America season opener having been thoroughly tested – and it showed. Bruce pipped Hulme to pole by 0.1s, 1.8s faster than third-placed Gurney’s Lola. Although McLaren retired thanks to a leaking oil cooler leading to bearing failure, Hulme won by more than a minute and a half.

That set the tone for the season. Hulme led 1-2s over the next two races before misfortune struck, at which point Bruce reeled off three wins. That meant McLaren led Hulme by three points heading into the Stardust finale.

McLaren took pole and Hulme lost a lap early on with a puncture, only for McLaren to retire with an oil leak. Hulme, recently crowned F1 world champion, could now take the Can-Am title if he recovered to fourth. He did so, but then the 500bhp fuel-injected 5.9-litre Chevrolet V8 failed. The Lola of Surtees won, taking the only non-McLaren victory of the campaign, while Bruce became champion.

He reckoned the M6A was better in slow corners compared to rivals, while in Doug Nye’s McLaren: The Grand Prix, Can-Am and Indy Cars Hulme said: “The beauty of it is that you can toss it about like a single-seater.”

The M6B was the Trojan-produced customer version, which predictably proved popular. Donohue added a sixth Can-Am victory for the design when he won the second round of the 1968 season at Bridgehampton in Penske’s immaculate and modified seven-litre example.

4. McLaren M8F

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Wins: 9
Poles: 8
Fastest laps: 9
Title: 1971

McLaren faced some decent opposition in 1971. There was a Carl Haas Lola for Stewart, who would go on to take his second F1 title that year, Jo Siffert ran an unblown Porsche 917/10 – albeit on a shoestring before the arrival of Porsche’s full force – and there were interesting if ultimately fruitless cameos from Shadow and Ferrari.

Designer Gordon Coppuck lengthened the wheelbase by three inches compared to the M8D, plus the M8F had a stronger monocoque, minor aero improvements, a Chevy V8 now beyond eight litres, and the rear brakes went inboard, the latter development not one that Hulme liked…

Stewart won two races, the second after Hulme suffered universal join failure that deprived him of retardation and fired him off at the start at Mid-Ohio. That was exactly why Hulme hadn’t wanted inboard brakes and his car would be rebuilt with conventional outboard anchors.

The specification of Hulme’s M8F and Revson’s example diverged as the season went by but both seemed to edge away from Lola, and McLaren scored eight wins from the 10 rounds. Revson took the title with five, while Hulme was runner-up with three victories.

Rising F1 star Francois Cevert raced Revson’s M8F, now run by the Young American Racing Team, in 1972. He chased the turbocharged Penske Porsches and works McLaren M20s with verve and was rewarded with victory at Donnybrooke when the quicker cars struck misfortune, giving the M8F its ninth Can-Am victory.

The M8F is probably the quickest Can-Am car you’ll see in historic racing, too.

3. Porsche 917/10

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Wins: 8
Poles: 6
Fastest laps: 5
Title: 1972

The turbocharged Porsche revolution in Can-Am almost didn’t happen. Not only was Porsche – so long a proponent of low-drag aerodynamics for Le Mans – initially slow to grasp the downforce requirements of the American competition, for some time its turbocar failed to run properly. And even when it did, the turbo lag made it a tough car to drive.

Nevertheless, extensive development and testing, with major contributions from Donohue and Bosch, got the five-litre 917/10 ready just in time for the 1972 season. History now suggests that Porsche and the factory-supported Penske operation steamrollered the McLaren opposition, but it wasn’t quite that simple – at least, not to begin with.

Donohue took pole for the Mosport opener and duly led before induction problems struck, leaving Hulme to win – and Revson took his McLaren to fastest lap despite Donohue putting on a recovery charge to second.

Then Donohue suffered an enormous crash in testing for Road Atlanta when the rear bodywork came off, putting him in hospital. George Follmer duly stepped up and won the race, but only after both McLarens had retired.

Hulme won the third round at Watkins Glen on a day a troubled Follmer came home fifth, so the championship fight looked very much on. And McLaren’s M20 took poles at Road Atlanta (round two, Hulme), Watkins Glen (round three, Revson) and Road America (round five, Hulme), so it took a while for the turbo power to tell even in qualifying.

But Penske and Porsche kept developing the 900bhp 917/10, with revisions such as improved turbos and wider tyres, plus the injured Donohue returned from hospital to help Follmer set up the car even before he was ready to drive the team’s second machine.

Despite a couple of spins, Follmer won brilliantly in the wet at Mid-Ohio, then charged from 13th to second at Road America. He was chipping away at Hulme when the leader’s Chevy died due to a faulty magneto – McLaren’s legendary reliability was deserting it at just the time it needed it against the new technology.

All the quick cars, which now included Donohue’s 917/10, hit trouble (Follmer running out of fuel on the final lap while leading) at Donnybrooke, but Porsche won the three remaining rounds. McLaren detuned its engines for greater reliability but still struggled to finish races.

It brought a special 9.3-litre Chevy for qualifying at the Riverside finale and an inspired Hulme got within 0.3s of Follmer’s pole, but the result was the same. Follmer’s five wins (plus one for Donohue) meant he took the title with twice the score of Hulme, and McLaren withdrew from Can-Am at season’s end.

The 917/10 managed two more wins at the start of 1973 but had no answer to Porsche’s ultimate evolution of the theme – the 917/30 – once Donohue got into his stride.

2. McLaren M8B

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Wins: 11
Poles: 11
Fastest laps: 10
Title: 1969

Former McLaren boss Teddy Mayer reckoned the high-winged M8B was probably the best car his team ever built. Given he also oversaw the M23, one of the great F1 cars, that’s quite something.

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Stats-wise, the M8B tops this list. It won 11 races from 11 poles to take a clean sweep of the 1969 Can-Am races. Bruce McLaren and Hulme finished 1-2 on eight occasions in the seven-litre Chevrolet-engined machine that produced around 635bhp, with George Bolthoff looking after the powerplants.

It was closely related to the successful M8A, with bodywork and aero tweaks the main changes, the most obvious being the Chaparral-style high rear wing mounted on the suspension uprights. Although closely related, even McLaren was surprised at how much of a step it was over its older sibling.

Hulme and McLaren were usually so comfortable that they could afford to play with each other in races, or toy with the opposition, which included Amon’s Ferrari. Perhaps the M8B’s ultimate day came at Michigan: Gurney drove the spare car from the back of the grid to third, completing a 1-2-3 behind McLaren and Hulme. They were covered by a little over a second, a lap clear of the field.

The M8B broke lap records everywhere it went and, partly thanks to rule changes banning high wings, many of its times remained unbeaten in 1970. Indeed, Hulme’s Road America and Mid-Ohio pole laps weren’t bettered until the arrival of the Porsche turbos in 1972.

At Watkins Glen, both McLaren’s pole time and Hulme’s fastest lap would go unbeaten when the F1 teams arrived later in the year for the US GP. And neither mark would be surpassed by the F1 visit in 1970 either.

A rare failure for Hulme in the Texas finale handed the race and title to a surprised McLaren, who scored 165 points to his team-mate’s 160. Lola driver Chuck Parsons was third on just 85!

The M8B continued to be potent in privateer hands with a lower rear wing following the rule changes. McLaren’s 1969 spare was one of the cars used by Lothar Motschenbacher on his way to second in the 1970 standings and the M8B was still capable of podium finishes in 1971.

The only thing stopping this remarkable car topping our list is a design that was so game-changing it killed Can-Am…

1. Porsche 917/30

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Wins: 6
Poles: 9
Fastest laps: 8
Title: 1973

Three McLarens and the 917/10 scored more wins, but the 917/30 has to be regarded as the ultimate car of the no-holds-barred era of Can-Am. So out of reach was it that the rules changed after 1973 and the ‘unrestricted’ philosophy was banished forever.

Although it had seen off McLaren, the 917/10 was still far from a perfect car, particularly when it came to handling. The 917/30 had revised aerodynamics, a wider front track and a longer wheelbase, plus the final 5.4-litre version of the flat-12, producing anything from 1100bhp, more when the boost was turned up.

Its advantage over the privately run 917/10s, which formed the closest thing to opposition in 1973, showed how much better the Penske-run factory car ultimately was. Donohue clashed with a backmarker at the Mosport opener and suffered a serious fuel leak at Road Atlanta (after he’d won the first heat) but dominated the remaining six rounds.

Donohue took pole and set fastest lap at every event in 1973. His average pole margin was 1.55s, with a high of 3.3s at Road America. None of his pole times were beaten the following season and several of his lap records stood for years.

The 917/30’s total domination, which frustrated even Porsche customers who wanted to buy one given Donohue sometimes had access to a spare car that usually sat in the paddock, led to fuel restrictions for 1974 that essentially outlawed turbos. In raw pace terms, the 917/30’s enforced retirement represented a backwards step for motorsport.

At Watkins Glen, scene of the 1973 US GP more than two months later, Donohue’s Can-Am pole was 0.8s faster than Ronnie Peterson’s F1 benchmark in a Lotus 72, while his best race lap was 1.8s ahead of the fastest GP lap by James Hunt. On the right circuit, the 917/30 was the fastest road-racing car in the world and was still quick enough to take the closed-course speed record at Talladega in 1975, averaging 221.1mph.

The 917/30 also contributed to the 1976 Porsche 936, which would become the first turbocharged car to win the Le Mans 24 Hours – and would do so three times.

In Peter Morgan’s book, Porsche 917: The winning formula, long-time Porsche engineer and race manager Peter Falk said: “I think the 917/30 was really the best racing car we ever built. Better than all the cars that followed, even the 962.”

That’s quite something from the world’s greatest sportscar manufacturer. And makes the 917/30 worthy of our top spot.

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