- celebrating gordon murray's 50 years as an automotive engineer, the t.50 is intended to carry on the tradition of the mclaren f1 (which he designed) at the more palatable price of about $2.6 million.
- gordon murray automotive will build 100 road cars and 25 track-only cars; the t.50 will be revealed in 2020, and customers will start taking delivery in 2022.
- the company is doing wind-tunnel development in partnership with the racing point formula 1 team—the one whose owner, lawrence stroll, is tied to a rumor he's going to buy aston martin.
we have already told you about gordon murray's plans to launch a new hypercar clearly inspired by the mclaren f1 he created in the early 1990s. now gordon murray automotive has released some more images and details and has also given us the chance to talk to murray in more detail about it.
the t.50 is intended to be a celebration of murray's 50-year career, the first product from what he hopes will be an ongoing car brand, but also a bookend to the story of ultrafast internal-combustion cars. "the modern supercar started with the [lamborghini] miura, in my view," murray told c/d when we interviewed him at his company's headquarters in england last week. "the mclaren f1 was the central milestone: very sexy, pure lightweight, nothing it didn't need. so i thought, why don't we do the last great analog supercar?"
the t.50 will share the mclaren f1's three-seat layout, naturally aspirated v-12 engine, and manual gearbox, but it is also set to add a hugely clever electrically powered aerodynamic system. while this draws part of its inspiration from the famous brabham bt46b "fan car," which murray designed in 1978—and which won the only formula 1 race it ever entered in spectacular style—the t.50's active aero turns out to be considerably more advanced.
the bt46b used a motor-driven fan that was officially there to cool the engine to also suck air from beneath its skirted underside, replicating lotus's ground-effects aerodynamics. the t.50 uses a less powerful 48-volt electric fan, clearly visible in the released rendering of the rear of the car, to allow a much more aggressive diffuser shape beneath the body.
"normally, diffuser air won't follow anything more than a gradient of about 7.5 degrees. it just separates, so your diffuser shape has to be gentle," murray explained. "every designer on the planet would love to have a very aggressive diffuser like this, but the air will just say 'no, thanks,' and you end up with a pool of stagnant air where the diffuser has stalled, and the flow will just do its usual thing."
the electric fan is used to suck the dirty air from this disrupted boundary layer away from the top of the diffuser. "once that's out of the way, the air has to follow the surface," murray said. "at lower speeds you can generate much more downforce because the fan does the work. it's not literally sucking the car down, but it is creating a much more efficient diffuser."
while we haven’t been given downforce numbers yet, murray insists the system’s ability to create different levels of downforce is much more important than its peak suck. the car will have both an auto mode and a high downforce mode, which will increase around 30 percent more, as well as an automatically engaged braking mode, which will deploy in the event of a serious stop. by generating maximum downforce, we're told, the system can take more than 30 feet out of the t.50's stopping distance at 150 mph.
a high-speed slipstream mode will make the t.50 much more efficient at speed, shutting valves to reduce the ground effect to the minimum required for stability while simultaneously diverting the efforts of the 400-mm fan to suck from two inlets on the car's rear flanks. this will have the effect of both reducing drag and using the air expelled behind the car to create what gma describes as a virtual longtail. "drag drops by 10 percent, which is massive," murray said. "you're no longer creating downforce you don't need."
the weight of the fan's motor, blades, ducting, and valves is reckoned by murray to be less than 22 pounds, less than the mass that would be added by the hydraulic actuators required for a conventional adjustable wing. switching to a starter-generator instead of using alternator and separate starter has also saved 10 pounds, and it also allows what murray describes as a "push to pass" mode—officially known as vmax mode—which briefly adds up to 30 horsepower to the engine through the starter-generator. ram effect on the air intake at speed will mean a peak output of 700 horsepower. the ability to effectively trim the car's aerodynamics according to velocity and chassis loadings has also allowed it to use both compliant springs and passive dampers. power steering will also be minimal: electric assistance only comes at parking speeds.
the engine's core statistics are as we revealed back in june, but murray was happy to reveal some more details. "i didn’t give cosworth a power target, but i did say it has to be as light as possible," murray said. "they've done a fantastic job; it's [132 pounds] lighter than the f1 engine."
although cosworth has also developed the naturally aspirated v-12 that will power the aston martin valkyrie, the t.50's engine is very different. it's much smaller and less powerful, but also happier to rev. "i said i wanted more than 12,000 revs because that would be a first for a road car," murray explained, "but i also wanted the pickup speed to be there. when you talk to owners of the f1, it's one of the things they love most about the car, the way it goes 'wang wang' up and down."
but while the mclaren f1's bmw engine can add 10,000 rpm per second, the t.50's will be able to add 28,000 revs a second. there will also be two engine modes: one that moves torque lower down, and, as murray put it, "runs out at what we call ferrari revs, so around 9500 rpm." murray says the more aggressive setting is "the one for when you say to your mate, 'do you want to hear 12,000 rpm going through the tunnel?' "
while we entirely approve of murray’s decision to give the t.50 a six-speed manual gearbox, he revealed that this was largely due to lobbying from potential buyers. “i was going to use a sequential manual box, but buyers said please make it a 'manual manual' with an h-pattern." the majority of the 100 t.50s gma is planning have already been sold, and murray says he has only encountered one potential buyer who couldn’t drive a stick.
there will be a paddle-shift version, but not of the road car. gma is also planning to produce 25 of a track-only version, which will use a motorsport sequential gearbox. "that's going to have three times the downforce of the road car, and at the speeds you're going to be doing around a track it doesn't make sense to be worrying about gears," murray said. it will also have fixed wings but still use the fan to maximize downforce from the diffuser.
gma has also announced a technical partnership with the racing point formula 1 team—the one owned by canadian billionaire lawrence stroll, who has recently been linked with an attempt to buy aston martin—which will allow the t.50 to be developed using racing point’s wind tunnel and aerodynamic expertise. murray says that the project is on time and on budget, with the car set to be formally unveiled next year and the customers taking delivery in 2022. some will be in the u.s, although the car will only enter the states under show and display restrictions. murray says that a central driving position can be federally homologated, but not when it is flanked by two other seats.
although many t.50 buyers will already possess a mclaren f1, murray says that around 40 percent are under the age of 45: something that makes many of us reassess the life choices that left us unable to consider a $2.6 million hypercar by the same age. "i had an f1 for a while, and when they start getting up to $10 million to $15 million—now even $25 million—you're not sure about taking them out in the wet and sliding them about to show your friends what fun it is," murray said.
"here's one for a fraction of the price they can go and thrash to death. several buyers have told me that’s exactly what they are going to do with it."