The hardest part of writing up my interview with Gordon Murray about the forthcoming T.50 hypercar was leaving bits out. While the internet wasn't likely to run short of pixels, I hadn't been commissioned to write a novella, so opted to try and concentrate on the more interesting technical details.
But we did talk about other stuff, including the business plan behind the car, the schedule for producing it and even whether Murray would like to see it go racing. And with a significant number of comments under the original story doubting the viability of the whole project, this seems like a good opportunity for a - much briefer - round two.
While I don't have any skin in the game beyond wanting very much to live in a world where the T.50 is a real thing, I also don't have any doubts that it is going to happen, and on Murray's timetable too. I've spoken to lots of putative supercar makers over the years, several of which have been promising little more than speculative vaporware. But Murray was entirely willing to talk specifics, promising that the first cars will be delivered in early 2022 with production at Gordon Murray Automotive's new Dunsfold facility then running at two and a half cars a week, meaning all 100 road cars being delivered within the year.
"We don't do late," he said, "there's no such thing as late in Formula 1, if you don't make the first race the FIA chuck you out of the championship, and that's the ethos we have here. I think it's difficult to understand, but it can be much safer and less riskier for a small, tight-knit company to control a program like this one, to make sure you aren't late and stay on budget."
A majority have already been sold, with chunky deposits taken against them. Murray said that the company is in "the final phase - it's about the time to process people, to get them in here to talk to me and to see the car. We've got more people than we've got cars left."
Murray admitted that the T.50 isn't going to be a great money-spinner for his company, even at £2m a time for the road cars. "It can't lose money, but it's not a great money making thing," he said, "initially investors wanted me to keep the costs under £1m, but I worked out I'd have to make 300 cars and I didn't want to do that. I don't want to start being a car company... the price is worked out on what it costs us plus a little bit of profit."
Murray says that creating the T.50 is much more expensive than doing the McLaren F1 was, due to how much harder and more expensive meeting homologation requirements has become. Murray volunteered the example of the Cosworth-designed V12 engine... "Believe it or not, more than 50 per cent of the money is in the electronics, because of emissions and all that stuff. In the old days you paid for the mechanical design and tooling and that was pretty much it, now that's just where it starts."
Although GMA isn't going to be a car company with series production models, Murray is open that he wants the T.50 to be followed by other projects, each one distinct from the others, and limited to similar volumes.
"The T.50 won't be a huge money-making exercise," he said, "but we are going on with the company after this and - in a nutshell - this is the halo product we are relaunching the brand with. The same way I did with the [McLaren] F1, it famously didn't make any money - it only made money when it went racing."
Which begged an obvious follow-up. Given that the McLaren F1 wasn't designed to go racing, something that Murray warned Ron Dennis about early in the scoping phase, does Murray have any motorsport ambitions for this very similar road-biased three-seater?
"We're in exactly the same position again," he admitted, "with one subtle difference - it's got a fan. It hasn't been designed with racing in mind, if I did it would have a long tail and a long overhang at the front and the styling would look terrible. But like the F1 it's light, it's stiff, it's got pure wishbone suspension front and rear, a low centre of gravity and a very low polar moment of inertia. It's got all the things you need to go racing - but I didn't sit down to create a car to do that."
Indeed Murray reckons the T.50's incredibly low weight would actually become a challenge with motorsport. "The regulations at the moment are all around 1,200kg minimum, and our track version will be 890kg. That's 300kg of steel to be carrying around, which I'm not keen on."
While the T50's 48V electric fan would be unlikely to be allowed for racing, given its ability to both dramatically improve downforce but also reduce drag, Murray said the car would still be enormously quick using fixed wings: "I would love to go racing, absolutely love to, but there are no plans to do so. We could always do a series for the track cars if there was enough interest, I think it would be worth doing just for the noise."
A pack of Cosworth V12s screaming to 12,000rpm - who wouldn't want to experience that?
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