Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 Debut

Lightweight Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 Formula 1 Tribute

In March 2021, Gordon Murray gave us what they billed as the ‘purest lightest supercar ever built, featuring a unique 3-seater carbon fibre interior and a V12 engine.

The Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 supercar did of course have much to battle through in the news stakes at the time, but as we approach the autumn of 2021, the T.50 has finally made its official debut. The T.50 demonstrated its finesse and V12 roar by completing 5 laps around the circuit at the 78th Goodwood Members’ Meeting held between 16-17 October 2021. This supercar was insured for its track day debut for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the region of £2m plus.

The T.50 supercar is described as a celebration of Formula One’s 50th year and mixes lightweight with the sort of muscle you would expect such a car to feature. It’s also the 50th Murray car design in just over 50 years. The car’s weight sits below a full tonne at 986kg thanks to a plethora of part-bonded carbon aluminium and a carbon fibre body. Gordon Murray Automotive say that for this project they have focussed on weight-to-power rather than power-to-weight, along with user-friendly overall performance ahead of lap times or straight-line speed.

Powering the rear-wheel-drive T.50 is a mid-mount 654bhp 3.9-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine developed in part with the assistance of Cosworth. Ram induction increases bhp to 690. The collaborative result is an engine that is the highest revving V12 ever produced for the road – the T.50 is capable of revving up to 12,100rpm. Power is controlled via a manual 6-speed gearbox developed by Xtrac. Ram induction is part of the V-Max drive mode aiding the T.50 supercar to achieve the highest speeds, while the high-downforce Streamline drive mode will allow the full benefit of that fan-induced downforce to be used.

Inside, the driver sits centrally with a passenger on each side, but possibly more striking than this layout is the prominent fan that sits at the rear reminiscent of the 1978 Murray Formula 1 Brabham BT46B ‘Fan Car’ – a car that resulted in the powers-that-be banning the technology from future Formula 1 race cars. The aggressive-looking fan sits in place of a rear spoiler and increases downforce by 100 per cent when braking. The fan also gives the T.50 15kg of more thrust, but maybe more importantly the aerodynamic ground-effect actually helps the T.50 supercar come to a halt 10 metres in advance at 150mph than a car equipped without the fan. 

Only 100 Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 supercars will be built costing around £2.8 million each, though surprisingly at such a price, these cars are not proving hard to shift with many paying the £600,000 deposit to get on the waiting list for January 2022. Following the 100 T.50 road supercars, an even smaller batch of 25 track ready T.50s are scheduled to be made available.

Let us know what you think of the T.50 in the comments.

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