Gordon Murray: how his T.50 picks up where McLaren F1 left off
His work here is not done: an heir to the McLaren F1 is just one of many projects being hatched by the visionary Gordon Murray
The man who gave us the world’s greatest supercar is ready to raise the bar higher. Gordon Murray’s T.50 is a new sports car from a new sports car company called Gordon Murray Automotive. It’s the spiritual successor to Murray’s marvellous McLaren F1. ‘It’s everything you like about the McLaren F1 but slightly better,’ says Gordon. ‘It may well be the last great analogue supercar.’
So we go to Gordon’s home in leafy rural Surrey, ‘the only house in Surrey that has one bedroom and 22 garages’, to talk T.50. We also discuss the past, the present, the future, and go for a drive in one of his many cars, all lightweight and all driver-focused. He’s chosen his Lotus Elan today.
We get a guided tour through those 22 garages and then go to the only drive-in cinema in Surrey. It’s certainly the only one where you can watch movies from inside a 1959 Cadillac flat-top sedan, starlit sky twinkling seductively above. In fact, they’re 120 fibre optic ‘stars’ embedded in a black ceiling. Gordon’s drive-in is actually in a big loft above one of his garages. But it feels like Happy Days circa 1959.
Gordon is wearing a colourful patterned shirt, as always, sports a neatly trimmed ’tache, as always, and does not look or behave anything like his 73 years. His CV is extraordinary. Design boss of Brabham from the mid ’70s to mid ’80s, technical director of McLaren’s GP team during the dominant Senna and Prost years, designer and mastermind of the McLaren F1 road car, owner of a successful design consultancy business, creator of a potentially revolutionary new car manufacturing process (iStream), champion of eco-friendly lightweight design and now – as if all that is not enough – founder of a new car company making the spiritual successor to the McLaren F1 in a new factory at Dunsfold in Surrey.
We start talking T.50. It uses most of the core technology and design flourishes that made the McLaren F1 great. Note the central driving position and the two passenger seats aft and outboard, the high-revving V12, the all-carbon construction and an absolute emphasis on light weight – just 980kg. There is a clutch-and-stick manual six-speed ’box in a deliciously old-fashioned H-pattern. Gordon wants the car to feel mechanical and paddleshifts do not.
Note also that the 3.9-litre V12 engine, designed and built by Cosworth, is naturally aspirated. Gordon does not like turbos. ‘No matter what the manufacturers tell you, they always have lag.’ And lag is not conducive to offering the greatest possible driving experience, Gordon’s priority for the T.50. ‘The V12 is all-new and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Valkyrie’s engine. It’s also much lighter than the Valkyrie’s V12. It’s likely to be the last great V12. It will also be the lightest, the highest revving – to 12,400rpm –and have the fastest engine response.’ The T.50 is, naturally, rear-drive. Four-wheel drive adds weight and dulls steering feel.
Top speed, record levels of power, Nürburgring lap times? All irrelevant, Gordon says. Although 700bhp is not exactly anaemic. Plus, there are many non-McLaren F1 touches, not least the 400mm electrically driven rear-mounted fan that works interactively with the lower and upper body surfaces. This boosts downforce when you want it (at 60-100mph, says Gordon) and sheds big downforce when you don’t, especially at very high speed when a fixed-aero car puts enormous pressure on the suspension and ruins comfort. The fan can also fill the trailing wake of air, improving the streamlining and stability. The active fan and the clever underbody surfacing mean there is no need for big wings. The upper surfacing is clean and uncluttered.
‘Fan’ cars are a Murray signature, of course. Remember the Brabham BT46B which debuted at the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix, won convincingly driven by Niki Lauda, and was then promptly banned?
Gordon is not impressed with the state of modern supercars. ‘The McLaren 720S is probably the most competent car I’ve ever driven, and it’s amazing how it adapts itself to a narrow, bumpy B-road or the track. It’s the best of the bunch. However, none of them really get the juices going from driving perspective. ⊲
‘You just don’t get that engagement or satisfaction from modern supercars’ GORDON MURRAY
‘You’ll never get a turbo to have the throttle response of a good non-turbo’ GORDON MURRAY
‘I have a ’59 Austin Healey-Sprite [the Frogeye] which has 43 horsepower and that just puts a smile on your face. The little burble it makes on overrun, the oversteer you get every time you touch the throttle, looking down the bonnet at the fantastic shape, the rifle-bolt gearchange. ‘The lack of engagement of modern supercars has happened for a few reasons. First, they’re nearly all turbocharged and I don’t think you’ll ever get a turbo to have the throttle response of a good non-turbo. Then there’s size and weight. Since ’92 I’ve been watching everything get bigger, heavier and turbocharged. You add hybridisation and electric motors to fill torque gaps and the resultant battery weight, and the complexity you have with all that. That compounds all the other problems.
‘Car makers are obsessed by horsepower, top speed and 0-60 times. It’s not for me. On the F1, we just tried to do the best engineered and best driver’s car, ever. What gives you the thrill and the sense of speed is the response time and the noise. It’s not speed per se and it’s not the linear push from electric motors.
‘While I can, I want to enjoy driving cars. And that’s why most of the summer I drive my classic cars. You just don’t get that engagement or the satisfaction from driving with modern supercars.’
To fix that, Gordon now brings us the T.50. Deliveries commence in January 2022. It’s his 50th new car design (racing and road) and it coincides nicely with Gordon’s 50 years as a car designer. One hundred will be built, priced at £2.36 million plus taxes.
But why bother when, at 73 years old, he has behind him a string of F1 world championships, accolades and palpable wealth? This includes homes in Scotland and France, as well as Surrey, and a collection of 45 classic cars – 35 of which, he proudly recites, ‘weigh under 800 kilos’.
‘I’d like another arm to the business. Part of it is to grow the Gordon Murray brand. What better way than to do another halo product? One last pure driver’s car to put a smile on your face.’
And after that? ‘We will carry on making bespoke, special cars. We won’t be a full-fledged car company making volume cars. The line is set up to make up to 100 cars a year, and no more. The T.50 is the flagship. A subsequent car might have to be electric. But I promise, if it is, it will be the lightest, best engineered electric car out there.’
While Gordon Murray Automotive is in its infancy, Gordon Murray Design is well established. Its major goal is to license the iStream process, the biggest single jump in car manufacturing since Henry Ford’s moving production line of 100 years ago, says Gordon. It’s more flexible, more eco-friendly, cheaper and more compact than the traditional car-making model used by all big car companies today. Gordon says iStream cars will also be safer and lighter.
‘Yamaha was on board, before a management change when they decided not to make motor cars. It would have been a perfect start for us. Had they gone ahead, their little sports car would have been in production for 16 months and I would have been driving one – 850 kilos, 1.0 litre, three cylinders.
‘We thought the first would be TVR but we’re still waiting for the funding to be put in place. I hope they go ahead. It’s a fantastic all-British project. I’ve only driven the car once. We’d done zero vehicle dynamics work and the car felt perfectly balanced.’ Murray and his team did the ⊲
styling of the new Gri th, the engineering, business plan and factory design. Murray continues to work on little electric-powered city car projects, which he believes have a long-term future (‘like a Twizy but much more grown up’). There’s also a small sports car, the T.43, that has a 1.5-litre three-cylinder Ford engine and weighs 845kg. ‘I’ll move heaven and earth to get someone to make that.’
Another sign of the breadth of Gordon’s design imagination is the OX, his lightweight small truck for Africa, designed to transport food, water, medicine and other supplies. ‘It’s a third the price of comparable vehicles, the ride quality is astonishing, and so are its capability and load-carrying capacity. It’s 1000 kilos lighter than all the opposition which means it can carry 1000 kilos more.’
The chassis uses iStream technology although the composite panels bonded to it are inexpensive plywood rather than the usual honeycomb. The body is built from a flatpack, reducing costs and ease of transportation. ‘It could change the lives of tens of thousands of people.’
His everyday drive is a new Alpine A110. ‘It’s a fantastic car. For 16 years I tried to find a replacement for my Smart Roadster and this is it. Relatively light, relatively small and engaging, although the DSG and turbo hurt it. If that was a manual and naturally aspirated, even with 100 horsepower less, it would be more engaging. The suspension set-up, too, is excellent. Up until the Alpine, the best ride and handling compromise I’d driven was the Lotus Evora. The A110 is better. It’s so good we benchmarked it before we started T.50.’
The Alpine is the first car we see when we tour Gordon’s garages. Here, 15 of his 45 classic cars are kept. Most of the others are at Dunsfold. Alongside the A110 is a pistachio green Lotus Europa, his most recently purchased Lotus. He also owns an S2 ’61 Lotus Seven, a 1960 Elite S2 – ‘600 kilos, a Coventry Climax engine, a beautiful little car’ – plus two
Elans and a Lotus 11. Murray is not a Ferrari man, so I was surprised to see a 308 GT4 2+2. ‘I’ve never lusted after a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. I was looking for a classic car with a nice throaty V8 that was practical to go away in for a weekend, with luggage. This is incredibly practical and the engine is lovely. It weighs 1100 kilos and I do like driving it.’
And there’s a ’57 Ford Thunderbird. ‘I love the whole Americana nostalgia. It has a 5.1-litre V8 and it weighs 1400 kilos, which is not bad.’ We see his Alfa Spider, Honda S800, Cortina GT, Frogeye and more. In the room above the T-bird in Gordon’s Americana section, we find his drive-in cinema, chop-roofed Cadillac flat-top sedan facing the screen, 4500 watt seven-channel surroundsound pumping out the noise.
Some of the garages are decorated with immaculate classic motorcycles hung from the walls. He has 22 of them.
‘These are my works of art. The Italians in the late ’50s and early ’60s were masters at making a 16-year-old feel like Agostini. Three and a half horsepower but who cares when you can look like that.’ In among the Moto Morinis, Malancas, Demms and Moto Guzzis we find a few Hondas, including its first 50cc four-stroke.
We finish our afternoon with Gordon doing what Gordon likes best, driving. He’s chosen his 1970 S4 Elan, and says: ‘The Elan is the best sports car I’ve ever driven. I spent the whole of the ’60s lusting after one and when I arrived in England in ’69 I bought a battered S3 with all the money I had. The feedback from an Elan is fantastic. I tried to get the steering feel from the Elan in the F1 but I missed it. The F1’s steering is good. But it’s not as good as an Elan’s.’ Gordon also raves about the space e ciency of his S4. He can easily fit his 6ft 4in frame in it. Of course, he recites the weight, ‘just 700 kilos’.
His enthusiasm for great cars is infectious. ‘Creatively, I think I’m in the best period of my life. With iStream, I can take all my learnings from Formula 1 and try to give it back to the everyday motorist, with all the safety and lightweight benefits it offers. At this period in my life, most people want to put their feet up. Instead, I’m working as hard as ever. I’m even about to start making my own cars again.’
‘Up until the Alpine, the best ride and handling compromise was the Lotus Evora. The A110 is better’
GORDON MURRAY