McMurtry Spéirling Achieves Goodwood Hillclimb Record

Depending on your viewpoint – quite literally your viewpoint – the electric McMurtry Spéirling looks like the meanest futuristic Batmobile styled hypercar ever, or a slightly odd and squat race car influenced by Mad Max. Whatever your literal view, the Spéirling is a striking looking automobile with some impressive credentials.

McMurtry are based in Goucestershire in the UK and have been innovating in the world of automotive technology since 2016. The McMurtry started off as a concept a couple of years later, and having been thrown a few pandemic-derived curveballs, the single-seater McMurtry Spéirling was revealed as a secret project concept at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2021, followed by testing and further development and tweaking at Castle Combe and Donington Park.

Let’s get straight into the McMurtry Spéirling’s stats – a claim of 0-60mph in just 1.5 seconds (yes you read that right) and a 0-186mph in just 9 seconds should perk any doubters up for starters, and a top speed of over 200mph cements the McMurtry hypercar as a car to take notice of for more than just its unique looks.

It’s a small car, a single seater as I said earlier, but there is enough room inside to not feel too cramped. Being a car not able to take any passengers also (along with plenty of carbon-fibre) helps keep the size and weight down and improve the car’s power to weight ratio. In fact, the McMurtry weighs in at under 1,000kg, which is rather impressive. The car’s battery gives 60kWh capacity with the ability to run flat out for anything between 30 minutes and an hour – perfect weather conditions will get you nearer the hour mark of course. There is no need for a rear spoiler either, which helps with the car’s unique look, as the Spéirling houses twin electric turbines behind the driver to pull in cooling air from underneath the car, pushing it out again at 120db at the rear. The advantage of this is that the car gets to benefit from powerful downforce assisted by these fans to the tune of around 2,000kg right from the off.

Goodwood Hillclimb Record

In June 2022 the ever-evolving gullwing-door McMurtry Spéirling achieved a mighty feather in its cap when it broke the Goodwood hillclimb record with a 39.08 second run. Max Chilton, an ex-F1 driver who came on board with the project earlier in the year, made sure the McMurtry Spéirling performed to the ideals of Sir David McMurtry and his team. Sir David is an Irishman with an impressive past that includes working on Concorde Rolls Royce engines. He has long harboured the ambition that the Spéirling would catch the attention of automotive fans with such an accolade as the Goodwood hillclimb record. Spéirling is an Irish word that means ‘thunderstorm’ incidentally.

For the Goodwood run, the McMurtry Spéirling was tweaked to be able to perform at its best for this challenging task. Twin electric motors sent around 1,000bhp heading towards the rear wheels – that’s practically a 1:1 – 1bhp per kg – when it comes to power to weight ratio stats. The supercar’s top speed for the hillclimb was limited to 150mph due to hill-specific gearbox adjustments.

McMurtry says that the ultimate dream is to build a road car with full capability of also performing on the track. Now that will be something to patiently wait for.

Images: mcmurtry.com