DRIV3R.world had the absolute privilege of chatting to the father of the modern day supercar, Gordon Murray. The man who designed and built the McLaren F1, a car that set new standards and outperformed the legendary Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959, is once again redefining the supercar,this time with the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50. More about the T.50 later. Here is a little more about the man.
Growing up in South Africa at 18, the young Gordon Murray figured out that the only way to race was to build his own car. Having spent 2 years building the car Gordon then raced in hill climbs and track races through 1967 and 68. Sometimes winning, often crashing, mostly learning a lot every single day. He got interested in the design side of race cars as he had to do calculations for everything from building the engine to chassis and suspension setup. He also built his own engine in his bedroom. We asked Gordon what advice he would give to young South Africans today…. “no matter what your academic qualification is, get your hands dirty, do something, but get your hands dirty.”
After racing in South Africa for 2 years, Gordon knew that if he wanted to follow that career, he had to go to the UK. Besides he also loved rock and roll and so where better to be in the early 1970’s, so he bought the cheapest ticket and got a ride on a converted cargo boat all the way to the UK.
After a failed attempt to join Lotus and toying with joining big car companies like Ford, Gordon realized he wasn’t interested in mass produced cars. His dream was to work with sports cars or racing cars. Follow your passion he says and after looking for 5 months, he got a job at the Brabham F1 team. At that stage he wasn’t even thinking about F1, lucky break, even luckier for Brabham and Bernie Ecclestone. Within a year Gordon designed a brand-new car for Brabham and won their 1st grand prix. Gordon went on to run the technical side of Brabham for 17 years, winning 2 world championships and chalking up many race wins.
In 1987 Gordon joined McLaren as technical director where he designed 3 F1 cars over 3 years and had 3 world championships. His first McLaren F1 car holds the record for most number of wins in a year, 15 out of 16 races. Halfway through this 3 year stint and after 20 years in Formula 1, Gordon wanted a new challenge. How about the idea of having a car company. McLaren road cars was born and new standards for the supercar where set in 1991 with the launch of the McLaren F1. Still today dubbed by many as the best supercar in the world!
So can he do it again? Fast forward to current times and back to the T.50 we spoke about earlier. In November 2017, Gordon Murray Automotive announce plans to build very exclusive supercars, only 100 units per year. The first is the T.50. Gordon and his team have been working on it for 18 months. It is the “successor” to the McLaren F1, a brand new v12 all over again. The goal, just like the last time, to build the best supercar in the world!
Gordon Murray Automotive has unveiled its T.50 supercar in full for the first time, showing the finished exterior and interior design and confirming its ground-breaking technical specifications. The T.50 has been engineered to be the purest, lightest, most driver-centric supercar ever.
Improving on his acclaimed McLaren F1 “in every conceivable way”, Professor Gordon Murray CBE is leading the team that will begin building customer versions of the 986kg supercar in January 2022. Justifying its £2.36m price tag, the T.50 promises to deliver an unsurpassed driving experience. It is powered by a 100% bespoke 3.9-litre, 663PS V12 engine that revs to a record-breaking 12,100rpm, and features the most advanced and effective aerodynamics ever seen on a road car – aided by a 400mm rear-mounted fan.
The global premiere is the first time the clean lines of the exterior and the driver-focused interior have been seen. From his first ballpoint sketches, to every engineering and design detail, Murray has led the Gordon Murray Automotive team and briefed and overseen suppliers to drive the project forward at an unrelenting pace. Murray’s design for T.50 was the 50th in a prestigious line of race and road cars he’s penned over his illustrious 50-year career – both reasons combining to name the car T.50.
In closing we asked the father of the supercar and soon to be father of the supercar again, the Durban born Gordon Murray to summarise his advice to young South Africans:
1. “the first thing is always get your hands dirty, get out there and do something practical, because that’s the best way to, not just to learn but to put your academic, its all very well learning all the academic stuff but unless you know that interacts with the real world its useless really.”
2. “unless you are absolutely convinced with what you want to specialize in, try and get a job or work experience in somewhere where you’ll be exposed to more than just one discipline. In a few years you can decide which bits you really like doing and which you don’t like doing and you can start steering your career in a certain direction.”
Thank you Gordon for shifting the motoring world.