Gordon Murray’s fan car for the road
When is a big fan not the standout feature of a new car? When it’s Gordon Murray’s T.50.
1 It’s a featherweight
The man behind some of Formula 1’s finest cars and the McLaren F1 road car was not going to mark his 50th car in a 50-year career by putting his name on a porky SUV. The Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 weighs 980kg. ‘The future of true performance cars lies in shedding weight intelligently,’ says Murray. The carbonfibre monocoque and bodywork weighs less than 150kg, the V12 engine just 178kg.
2 It’s turbo-free
The T.50’s low weight means it doesn’t need a huge engine. Instead Murray asked Cosworth to build him a high-revving, naturally-aspirated V12 that makes 654bhp (or 690 in ‘Vmax mode’) and 344lb ft from 4.0 litres, with a power-to-weight ratio of 663bhp per tonne. It revs to 12,100rpm, which it can reach from idle in just 0.3 seconds. And Murray insists it sounds better than any turbo or hybrid engine.
3 You can bring your mates Like his ’90s benchmark, the T.50 has manual transmission – in this case a six-speed ’box from Xtrac. Also like the F1, the new car is a three-seater, with the driver in the middle and slightly ahead. It’s no stripped-out trackand orientated bone-shaker. It has usable luggage space, switchable engine modes easy access via those dihedral doors.
4 It defies the weather gods Keeping the upper body free of unsightly wings, vents and bulges, the T.50 has a 400mm ground-effect fan as part of a six-mode manually-adjustable active-aero package. The rear-mounted fan rapidly accelerates air passing underneath the car, forcing it through active ducts in the rear diffuser. All done for pure engineering reasons, no doubt, but also a neat nod to Murray’s 1978 Brabham BT46B Formula 1 ‘fan car’.
5 It costs a fortune
Okay, not such a departure from the supercar norm. If you want a T.50 you’d better be rich and you’d better be quick, as only 100 will be built, with customer deliveries starting in January 2022. It will cost you £2.36 million before taxes. That being said, even with that lofty price tag it’s still not as expensive as buying a McLaren F1 today.