Wrap your head around Gordon Murray’s game-changing T.50 supercar

Gordon Murray has finally lifted the lid on his new T.50, which he claims is the purest, lightest and most driver-focused supercar ever built. A worthy successor to the mighty McLaren F1? We certainly think so…

Does the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 live up to your expectations? If you’re anything like us, the drip-feed of information titbits and gulp-inducing video teasers over the last few months has left you yearning to learn more than any other supercar in recent memory. And now we’ve finally seen the finished product, we’re sure you’ll agree the hype was warranted.

What we have here is a three-seater, manual gearbox, mid-engined supercar which tips the scales at just 986kg thanks to the extensive use of carbon-fibre and is powered by a bespoke 3.9-litre Cosworth V12 that kicks out 650HP and revs to a dizzying 12,100rpm, the highest number ever recorded from a naturally aspirated twelve-cylinder engine in a production car.

Those facts alone are hard enough to get your head around, but by no means do they end there. There’s also a 400mm airflow-regulating fan that dominates the T.50’s backside, which operates in six distinct modes enabling the driver to optimise dynamic and outright performance including ‘High Downforce’ and ‘Streamline’. The latter decreases downforce by around 12 percent. (Followers of Professor Murray’s career will know this is a feature he pioneered on the Brabham BT46B Formula 1 car back in the 1980s to devastating effect – so much so it was promptly banned by the FIA.)

With regards to the styling, there’s definitely more of a GT feel to the T.50 than, say, the Aston Martin Valkyrie against which it will no doubt be pitched. And it’s more traditionally elegant as a result, not to mention more approachable for road use.

The diminutive and exquisitely packaged ‘active’ body, which when coupled with the small carbon-fibre tub, weighs a staggering 160kg, is minimal, devoid of fins and wings, and carries clear shades of the F1, not least in the side windows and the slightly raised spine. And the interior, with its central ‘fighter-jet’ driving position, is as well thought out as you’d imagine from the uncompromising British designer. And the details are nothing short of extraordinary.

Just 100 T.50s will be built in the United Kingdom under the Gordon Murray Automotive banner, priced at around £2.36m (excl. taxes), from 2022. Suffice to say, most are already spoken for. We imagine a large proportion of those owners-to-be already have a certain three-seater V12-powered supercar in their garages.

If Murray’s claim that the T.50 takes its core spirit from the F1 but improves on it in every discernible way is correct, who knows – one day perhaps it could supersede the ‘Big Mac’ in the desirability stakes as the modern-day Ferrari 250 GTO? Really, though, that’s beside the point – here’s a high-end modern supercar that we categorically know will be as engaging and pleasurable to drive as it is to look at. And that’s a very rare thing indeed.