When Gordon Murray announces a new super sports car, the auto world is less concerned than it is to sit up and take notice. This, after all, was the man behind the 1990s McLaren F1, an uncompromising three-side-by-side hypercar designed for the road that was crashed by Rowan Atkinson and won at Le Mans. The street-oriented T.50 and the race-track-oriented T.50s Niki Lauda are supposed to take over the legendary status of F1 and surpass it by a lot. Then no pressure.
“Everything that the McLaren F1 gave you from a driving experience perspective has been taken to a new level,” says Murray, arguably the most influential designer of very fast cars of his generation. “We have rewritten the supercar rules for the T.50.” These are bold claims, but since Murray owes not only F1 to but also real, groundbreaking Formula 1 cars for Brabham and McLaren that won multiple world championships in the 1970s and 1980s, these claims are very great indeed to take seriously. Murray’s pedigree is as pristine as it gets.
The T.50 twins are made by his own company, Gordon Murray Automotive, so there’s a purity not found in even the purest of supercars. Take the engine, a naturally aspirated V12 developed for the T.50 by Cosworth, the company that used to make the engines in the rear of some Murray-designed Formula 1 cars. According to Murray, the new V12 is the most revving V12 that has ever been installed in a street car. The bespoke gearbox is, he adds, the lightest supercar gearbox and, according to its creator, will have “the best gear change” of all supercars. In addition, thanks to the carbon fiber construction, the T.50 is a third lighter than its competitors. Make no mistake, this is a special car.
The exterior design is usually subtle. Murray’s Formula 1 cars, and especially those for Brabham, were known not only for their speed but also for their elegant shape. For the T.50, he avoided the additional aerodynamic wings, wings and ducts of the typical super sports car of the 21st century. Instead, there is what Murray calls “next-level” aerodynamics with “simple, timeless lines and clean surfaces,” a refreshing departure from the often hyperactive design of its competitors.
Then there is the fan on the back. A very big and very obvious fan. It’s there to provide ground effect aerodynamics, literally to suck the T.50 onto the road. Murray famously tried a similar device on one of his Formula 1 cars, the Brabham BT46B, which was so dominant in his only race with Niki Lauda that Brabham agreed to never drive it again on the grounds that it was easy too good dominant.
Like one The order books are very open now and we are sure Gordon Murray would like to hear from you. Just make sure you have around £ 3 million on hand before you pick up the phone to declare your own T.50. We’d say it’s worth every penny. In a world where battery power is the future, we may never see it again.
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