The story has been well told, in print and the more recent film, of how Bruce McLaren and Teddy Mayer created ‘McLaren’ in a shed with a dirt floor shared with graders, assisted by the team they built of more determined, talented young men, not one of them more than 25. It was the start of something big.
Timaru’s Wally Willmott was the first employee, and Mayer’s mate, Tyler Alexander, was a close second. That made Hamiltonian Howden Ganley recruit number three. Howden is the sole survivor of that original band of brothers, which included Eoin Young and Whanganui’s Bruce Harre, followed soon after by the first driver to be signed, none other than a young Chris Amon.
So it was only logical that as the dinner plates were gathered, clearing aural space for the interviews, it was to Howden that the MC turned to first celebrate the 60th anniversary.
True to form, Howden set a strong and self-deprecating tone for the rest of the long evening. “In life, you’ve either got
