evo India – July 2019

16 http://www.evoIndia.com | July 2019

HE PUREST, LIGHTEST, MOST DRIVER-

focused supercar ever built.’ Bold

words, granted, but when they come

from the man who designed the McLaren F1,

they need to be taken very seriously indeed.

Twenty-seven years after creating the fabled

F1, Gordon Murray is making another hypercar,

and this time it’s his name that will be applied to

the bodywork. Or rather, that of Gordon Murray

Automotive, a sister company to his Gordon

Murray Design (GMD) business, best known for

its iStream design and production system.

The new car will be called the T.50, and its

specification makes us wonder if Murray has

been eavesdropping on our conversations in

the evo office. Indeed, the legendary designer

even uses the magazine’s tagline, ‘the thrill

of driving’, in his press release about the

new car, which he says will be ‘the last, and

greatest, analogue supercar ever built’. Why?

Because the T.50 shuns much of the modern

doctrine on hypercars, from hybrid systems

to Ring lap times and immaterial top speeds,

focusing instead on a sense of involvement,

and the responsiveness and vibrancy of the

driving experience. The T.50 will not only be

extraordinarily light, it will also be compact:

shorter and narrower than a Porsche 992

Carrera, in fact.

A carbonfibre tub forms the core of the

car, onto which is attached as a fully stressed

member a very special engine: a bespoke,

3980cc, 65-degree, naturally aspirated V

designed and built by Cosworth, producing

652bhp and, incredibly, revving out to 12,100rpm,

some 1000rpm more than the larger V12 the

Northamptonshire firm has also designed for

the Aston Martin Valkyrie. It’s an unheard-of

number for a road car engine, and comparable

to an early 1990s F1 motor.

It’s not surprising that this new engine

produces a peak torque of ‘only’ 462Nm, given

its relatively small displacement, lofty rev limit

and lack of forced induction or electric boost,

but then at just 980kg the T.50 won’t need a

huge, lazy dollop of torque to get moving with

conviction. To save you doing the maths, that’s

676bhp per ton, which should be plenty...

In a deliberate ploy to create the ultimate

driver’s car, Murray has commissioned

transmission specialists XTrac to design a new

‘T

Gordon Murray bids adieu to the analogue era by making a true successor to the McLaren F

The second coming

I T

RESURRECTS

THE TECH

BEHIND THE

I N F A M O U S

BRABHAM

FAN CAR