Bruce McLaren, the man who founded the automaker of super fast, incredibly technical sports cars, came from New Zealand—but his name hails from an area of Scotland with beautiful scenery and some appropriately accomplished roads.
I’m not going to pretend to know the history of the McLaren clan from Scotland, but the above video does a pretty good job at laying out the basics. Whoever they were, it seems the excellent roads in the region the clan hails from seeped their way into the bloodline.
As Carfection’s Henry Catchpole explains, the roads are wider than your standard European stuff, letting you enjoy the speed and ability of something slightly bigger, like the new McLaren 570GT (which is also a pretty damn fine sports car). If we assume these roads were once paths, beaten down by the hooves of beasts with McLaren kin on their backs, the roots of McLaren’s taste for for beauty and performance become clearer.
Or they’re just some nice roads which become even nicer in a McLaren road car.