Murray launches latest supercar
T.50 will set buyers back US$3 million
Gordon Murray designed the most expensive car ever made, the McLaren F1, which requires US$20 million to purchase when one is offered for sale — which is almost never.
After that and 85 other supercars for employers that have ranged from Brabham to Mercedes-Benz, the mustachioed 74-year-old South African expat has unveiled the production version of the first car to bear his name.
The Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 is a US$3-million coupe with a carbon-fibre body and a rear fan as big as a turbine. Its naturally aspirated 650 bhp, 3.9-litre V12 engine will likely be the last non-electric version of its kind to be used in a car of this calibre. Production remains at full speed ahead, regardless of the pandemic, Murray says.
“If the car had already been in production, we would have obviously had a problem,” he says on the phone from one of his homes, this one “out in the sticks” in England. “But it just so happened (that) when we had lockdown back in April, we were in the middle of just signing off all the drawings for production, which is something that we can easily do from home.”
Supercar fans have had plenty of time to drool over their prospects of getting one since Murray showed an initial ballpoint sketch of the project two years ago. A show-only shell of a concept was released late last year. Still, twothirds of the 100 cars to be made are spoken for, and half of those buyers have paid both the first and second of the three monetary payment instalments required. (The last instalment will occur when the car is delivered, scheduled for 2022.)
Ostensibly, such buyers come to the rear-mid engine, rear-wheeldrive vehicle for the kind of supernatural driving experience heretofore only experienced by those who either race Grand Prix cars professionally or who own the F1. Its sheer feather weight sets it apart: At 2,173 pounds, the T.50 weighs a third of other supercars.
Murray says that he avoided the “weight-gain spiral” that can result from chasing top speeds and the highest power output. Instead, he benchmarked the lowest possible weight for every component in the car, down to individual nuts and bolts. The T.50’s fully carbon fibre monocoque and body panels total less than 330 pounds; the combined weight of three carbon-fibre seats is a mere 28 pounds.
Murray says he designed the T.50 to be one better than the F1. “We are in the perfect position of knowing what makes the F1 driving experience so good and what makes it bad, actually, because there are a few things wrong with the F1,” Murray says. “So this is better in every way because of modern technology and materials. And it’s lighter and the engine is better, so the driving experience is better, and you don’t have the massive insurance bill and the worry that something is going to go wrong.”
Customers are also, no doubt, buying into the myth that has enfolded Murray like a deep ocean fog rolling onto the coastline. A close friend of the late George Harrison, Murray is a true renaissance man: He paints extensively and designs houses in rural France and Scotland. Named Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) last year, he collects vintage T-shirts, with at least 1,000 stored in one of his bars in an English country house.
Brazilian superstar Ayrton Senna was driving Murray-designed cars during his dominant, glamorous F1 years. “Gordon is like a god to everybody,” says David Gooding, founder of Gooding & Co. auction house.