COVER Gordon Murray finally gets around to building the long-lost LCC Lightning
Road-car projects have occasionally peppered my predominently racing-focused career, but one promising sports car sadly fizzled out. Until now
The prototype workshop at Gordon Murray Design has done a great job of restoring and rebuilding my heritage cars. When we move to our new HQ in 2021 we will have a new Heritage Centre to house some of my early road and racing cars alongside GMD prototypes. Although most of the cars I’ve designed have been racing cars, I often look back on my road car designs. If we exclude the better-known examples such as the Mclaren F1 and the Mercedes SLR, we’re left with five – the 1967 IGM Ford, the 1972 Minbug, the 1981 Midas Alfa Romeo, the 1993 Rocket and the 1994 Light Car Company Lightning. The workshop has rebuilt the IGM Ford, Minbug and Midas Alfa; the missing link was the Lightning.
The Lightning was to have been the Light Car Company’s follow-up to the Rocket, which was great to drive but its radical tandem layout didn’t appeal to everyone. Chris Craft always wanted to follow up with a more conventional sideby-side two-seater sports car. Our mutual friend Martin Birrane was always a fan of the Rocket, but he too wanted a more conventional layout in a lightweight sports car. Chris approached me to design the Lightning, because I had designed every part of the Rocket a few years earlier. At this time I was so busy at Mclaren that I had to tell Chris that I could only do the basic design, the layout and some calculations.
Chris and Martin teamed up, with Mclaren supplying the funding. I worked from home in the evenings to develop the 500kg, 600bhp-per-tonne concept. For power we again turned to a motorcyclederived unit – two Yamaha FZR cylinder heads and top ends on a new cylinder block and crankshaft, incorporating a dry sump system. The finished engine was a lovely piece of kit – it weighed very little and produced 305bhp at 10,000rpm – just the job for a 500kg motor car!
I drew a Sixties-inspired spider body for the car and the plan was to build the prototype with aluminium coachwork. Most of the design and prototyping work was taken over by Tony Mundy of Jamun Racing. The team set about building the first prototype but by this time I was so busy developing the Mclaren F1 GTR, I couldn’t spend much time on the project and I lost touch with the team. Chris decided not to use my Sixties body style and went with a more contemporary style. Unfortuntely the project faltered, leaving only a part-finished prototype in existence.
It remained unfinished in Martin Birrane’s collection. Sometime after his sad passing I approached the family to ask about the Lightning’s future, and we agreed a path forward for me to take over its completion and restoration. It’s in a sorry state, but our team will do a great job. It will complete my road car heritage collection and be a fitting tribute to the vision of Chris Craft and Martin Birrane. Gordon Murray is one of the most innovative automotive designers of his generation. He designed Gp-winning F1 cars for Brabham and Mclaren and the Mclaren F1 road car