RE: GMA reveals 725hp T.50s 'Niki Lauda'

[romac]

DjSki said:

"28,000 revs per second"..........

They mean to say "28,000 rpm per second. It's the rate at which the rotational speed of the engine increases. (Sorry, there doesn't seem to be a "suck-eggs" smiley)

But what a fantastic car! I don't understand the "never see the light of day" negativity, nor the slagging off of McLaren for making cars for a different price category altogether. I wish GMA, and the Professor, all the best!

Edited by romac on Monday 22 February 23:21

[EdT]

Gordon, you total hero
You've done it again

[anonymous-user]

Max_Torque said:

...35 degrees along it's length...

That's incredible. How the hell did it even run? The valve timing must have been interesting!

[markclow]

Maybe this is a labor of love and GMA does plenty of other business that pays the bills?

Maybe he just wanted to build another legendary car?

That would explain only selling 100 of them when he could have sold more...

[Equus]

Water Fairy said:

590959F2-D105-4EF3-BBC4-578686E5E6FC by James Fawcett, on Flickr



88DD51F5-0405-4C64-B88D-36D4860E1108 by James Fawcett, on Flickr

^^^ Well, at least that clears up what the silly round thing in the middle of the rear panel is supposed to represent.

[MikeT66]

I think that looks brilliant. If only there was a top notch race series for these sort of things to compete in... like 24hr Le Mans.

[Civpilot]

deadscoob said:

It’s quite weird. It looks like a restomod F1 from the front and looks good. The rest is just a bit odd.
If McLaren launched this there would be 20 pages of non customers saying how sh1it it looks, how the side profile proportions are all wrong, how the rear looks like a kid drew it , front looks like everything else they’ve done etc etc

This.

I think the standard T.50 is stunning and really looks like it will be as good as he claims. This thing is very ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ for me.

I’m sure it’s great, and I’m sure in another colour in the real world it will look better. But in those photos in that colour it’s utterly gash looking.

If it was from anyone other than Murray people would have already rolled out the Sniff petrol super car check list.

[whp1983]

Max_Torque said:

GMD said:

Drivers of a "good amateur" level should quickly feel comfortable edging their 725hp machine close to its limit.

really? I have some experience in this area (having worked on a fair number of rather high performance road at track cars, like the Mclaren P1/P1GTR and race cars specifically designed for "good amateurs" such as the AMR DBR9 etc

And, i can tell you, driving a full on aero assisted car, ie one with a ratio of over 1:1 (825kg mass, 1,000 kg aero) is not something that many "good amateurs" i have ever met and seen driven quickly feel comfortable with. At that ratio, should you loss downforce for any reasons, from a hitting a bump to poor driving and touchning a kerb or having the suspension not set absolutely perfectly for the track you are on, your are off, because you are suddenly going TWICE as fast as the car could corner with purely mechanical grip. And no one gets back from there, not even the likes of Hamilton or Senna. Watch the F1 accidents, that is the level at which we are talking for a car with more than 1:1 aero assistance!

The P1 GTR was 1,455 kg mass and a maximum of around 700kg of downforce a ratio 1:0.5 and that was,ime, too much for the majority of drivers to deal with.......

The problem is, when it goes wrong, we are talking about energies that are significant, in fact, life threatening, and killing your customers is something most companies try to avoid in general.

We have been here before of course, as the short lived Caparo T1 showed, that just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and engineers can today easily build a car that is simply too much for most people

I looks immense, can’t even imagine what it’s like to drive...... I’m sure the above hypothetically is a problem, but we all know these aren’t being driven- no issue exploring limits of grip in a warehouse, sadly

[jcl]

Mega but ridiculous. I love the standard car so I’ll stick with that.

[howardhughes]

Hideous doesn't even come close. That rear end...WTF were they thinking.

[86wasagoodyear]

Blimey. And I want a law mandating all car makers to ditch all interior screens, tech & associated nonsense, to be replaced by a panel of switches like this. Only what's needed, on or off. Love it.

[chelme]

Gameface said:

Escy said:

They haven't even built the test mules for the road car program yet and they announce this. Call me cynical but maybe they are in trouble and needing a load of deposits?

Gordon Murray is not Les Edgar.

I am a little more cynical these days too. I would want to see the T. 50 doing well for the company before seeing this appear. One step at a time and all that.

[anonymous-user]

Wow would love it in black ! almost bat car like then

[Baddie]

Max_Torque said:

If the fundamental torsional vibration mode of the crank falls within the operating speed then the crank can and will snap with just the inertial load from the mass of the rods and pistons going up and down. Add in some valvetrain TV and in this case, an electricmotor as well, and you have a recipe for snappage!


I once did a TV measurement on a certain race engine, using a simple system of fitting a crank trigger wheel to both ends of the crankshaft, and recording the output waveform of the two Varriable reluctance sensors into the left and right channels of a PC sound card, and then running the resultant wave file through a bit of Matlab to calculate the relative phase and calculate the modulation of that phase in the crank angle domain and found that the crank of that 4 cyl engine was actually twisting by up to 35 degrees along it's length, and it was worst at low speeds where it was close to it's fundamental and there was simply more time for the crank to deform!

When i showed the results to the crank manufacture their respose rhymed with "clucking bell"...... ;-)

Wow, that’s eye opening, thank you.

I know the crank’s longer, but do you think the same applies within a V12 with lighter individual masses, overlapping firing intervals and perfect primary and secondary balance? Surely, the road legal version can’t idle at 3k, but this one may just have to as they’ve ditched the VVT.

[WokkaWokka]

Road version is lovely.

[MStroud80]

LM Hypercar territory?

[rampageturke]

isn't this the exact thing he said he didnt want to do?

[anonymous-user]

Appreciate that I'm in a total minority here, but for some reason I can't get too excited by this or the road going version. Even the "engineering nerd fest" doesn't really seem that interesting in the same way it does with Koeningsegg (for example).

That said, UK jobs and technical excellence is great. But I don't see any need to constantly take swipes at McLaren, because on the UK job/exporter front they are doing a lot more than GM ever has or ever will. And I say that as a Ferrari owner, not a McLaren fan boy.

[blue al]

chelme said:

Gameface said:

Escy said:

They haven't even built the test mules for the road car program yet and they announce this. Call me cynical but maybe they are in trouble and needing a load of deposits?

Gordon Murray is not Les Edgar.

I am a little more cynical these days too. I would want to see the T. 50 doing well for the company before seeing this appear. One step at a time and all that.

That 2030 clock won’t stop ticking.....then anything like the road car

This for “ competition use” looks to me like a get out of jail free card

[Equus]

ThePackMan said:

Appreciate that I'm in a total minority here, but for some reason I can't get too excited by this or the road going version. Even the "engineering nerd fest" doesn't really seem that interesting in the same way it does with Koeningsegg (for example).

That said, UK jobs and technical excellence is great. But I don't see any need to constantly take swipes at McLaren, because on the UK job/exporter front they are doing a lot more than GM ever has or ever will. And I say that as a Ferrari owner, not a McLaren fan boy.

I sat and watched the Harry Metcalfe YouTube last night; Harry was excellent as always (much better than the fawning hyperbole of the 'official' Dario Franchitti videos) and I do enjoy listening to Gordon but for all the engineering effort that's been put into it, I couldn't help but spend the whole time thinking "that's all very well, but wouldn't it be nice if they'd spent all that effort creating something that's actually relevant.

£3milllion+ so that a handful of the ultra-wealthy can drive round in circles a few times on non-competitive track days, before getting bored and putting under a dust sheet? In terms of the pinnacle to a lifetime's achievement, that's some anti-climax.