Gordon Murray: 'I can't see myself stopping'

The man, the legend talks us through Le Mans '95, his A110, and what he really thinks about restomods...

By Stephen Dobie / Saturday, 14 June 2025 / Loading comments

Attend the 2025 Festival of Speed and you’ll be enveloped by the life’s work of Professor Gordon Murray CBE, whose 60 years of car design and engineering are being trumpeted by the Central Feature in front of Goodwood House.

If you’re not sold on static cars or ornate sculptures, then you’ll be delighted to know that Murray-designed cars spanning the breadth of his career will also take to the famous Goodwood hill. Which should sound pretty damn good, not least when a T.50 performs its 12,000rpm fly-by. PH caught up with Gordon ahead of surely his busiest weekend in some time…

PH: Goodwood celebrates 60 years of your design work. Can you pick out one highlight?

GM: Winning your first Grand Prix is magic. Then you win your first Formula One world championship. Moments like the Brabham fan car provide a lot of satisfaction; I look back on those innovations in F1 very fondly. But if you're asking me to pick one, it would probably be winning Le Mans in 1995. I've always had a fascination with endurance racing and going there with a GT car and coming first, third, fourth, and fifth felt like putting our stamp on it. In a car that originally wasn't designed to race, too. We simply took the McLaren F1 road car, lowered it, put some aero devices on it, and fitted a fire extinguisher and roll cage. We created the Longtail in its third season, 1997, where I redesigned a whole motor car with a proper racing transmission and the like. But the Shorttails for ‘95 and ‘96 were just road cars. We won the race with an H-pattern gearbox. We must have been the last to do that.

Your expertise covers both design and engineering. Does that make the process of creating your supercars a little smoother?

With racing cars, there's not much room to manoeuvre. The packaging is so tight and the regulations are so controlled. You spend most of your time in modern Formula One doing detailed improvements on the aero side. But in road cars, where you're starting with a completely clean sheet of paper and must integrate a whole design with the aerodynamics, the crash requirements, and so on, there's a general war between the studio and engineering. The engineers know which elements you can't make, whereas the studio just wants their pure design translated into an engineered car. They're always at loggerheads with one another. Whereas at the moment, I've only got myself to argue with. It's a very short argument.

Your adoration of lightweight cars is well known. Have you found anything modern you enjoy driving?

I try to drive my classic cars in the summer, but my main car is my Alpine A110. It’s about 1100 kilos, which you can feel in its transient handling and vehicle dynamics. You feel its lack of weight as a fundamental thing. I've done 18,000 miles in mine now. I use it every day during the wet and muddy months. My wife and I share a Suzuki Jimny, too. The driveway is quite steep, and when it's frosty or snowy, we need a 4x4 to get out. That's also about 1100 kilos, and it's a magic car off-road. I’m taking delivery of an AGTZ Twin Tail soon. I have eight or nine Zagatos from different periods, and I thought this would be a nice bookend. They’re only making a handful of them, so it's probably a good investment. It’s all carbon, so it should be light and fun. If it drives well, I'll use that instead of my ‘normal’ A110. I didn't buy it purely to stick in the collection.

How do you feel about the restomod movement?

I'm a purist car designer, but I'm not a purist collector, so I'm quite happy with it. I’ve got an Alfaholics car, a Zagato Junior on their GTA-R chassis, and I love it. Firstly, because I wouldn't fit in an original so I would never drive it. They lowered the floor five inches and moved the rear bulkhead back six inches – it’s a car I've always loved, but now I can fit in it. Secondly, they’re all rusted, a bit underpowered, and they haven't got all the mod cons that you need to drive through winter. I've specified this one so I can drive it all year round and take it on rallies. I’ve also built a Mk1 Escort with Retro Power. Again, if you buy an original, you might encounter fogged-up windows or axle tramp. I went a bit bananas with that, putting in a 250hp Twin Cam and independent rear suspension, but from the outside, it’s in Old English White on steel wheels, and it hasn’t been lowered. My goodness, it's fun to drive, and you can use it for anything you like, basically.

Your GMA supercars have a similarly analogue vibe…

I'm fanatical about it. The T.50 is probably the most analogue new car there's been for 20 years. I hate touchscreens in a car with a vengeance – when you're trying to drive a motor car and look at the road, and you need to go down two or three layers of menu to adjust the air con, it's just insane. In the T.50, there are no touchscreens, and every single control is analogue. A lot of them are rotary switches, because those are more intuitive when you're driving. That's a very conscious design choice. We get congratulation letters from customers saying, ‘Thank goodness you've got a manual handbrake; thank goodness you've got an analogue rev counter.’ For our two little information screens, we wrote our own software and designed our own graphics. So those menus are very intuitive and easy to use – you're not losing focus on driving.

Is it safe to assume you’ve had a hand in designing the Goodwood Central Feature?

Yes. It’s different. It's not the normal whirly, twirly sculpture that they normally have, but we like it. I think Goodwood likes it too. It's being built at the moment. We have talked to the sculptor about the possibility of making it so we can dismantle and re-erect it at our new Windlesham factory [also designed by Murray]. It would be a bit of a shame to just chop it up.

Your 80th birthday is approaching. Any hints of slowing down?

After 60 years, you'd think it would be growing a bit thin, but it's not. I don’t know what else I would do with my life if it wasn’t this. I've never worked with such fantastic people, and I'm not just talking about engineers; I'm talking about the development team, prototype workshop, graphics team, studio, and press team. I was ill last year, but I'm back to working around 11 hours a day, and I love it. I certainly can't see myself stopping. I did say to my wife that I might consider retiring when I'm 90…