V12 supercar with an SA connection enters production

SA’s Gordon Murray became one of the world’s most celebrated car designers for his work in Formula One and on road-going supercars. The Durban-born engineer is best known for his Brabham and McLaren F1 racing cars in the 1970s and 1980s, and the McLaren F1 high-performance road car of the 1990s.

He later established his own supercar brand, Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) in the UK, and the T.50 supercar is in production as the first fruit of that venture. The T.50 was announced about two-and-a-half years ago as a purist, lightweight vehicle that seats three people, with the driver in the centre as with the McLaren F1 road car.

Just 100 units are being built at a price of £2.36m (R52.3m) apiece, with another 25 examples of the track-focused T.50s Niki Lauda. All the cars are spoken for. GMA has already announced a follow-up T.33 supercar, and all 100 build slots for that model are gone too.

The T.50 is viewed as the spiritual successor to the McLaren F1 road car and power is supplied by a Cosworth-developed 3.9l normally-aspirated V12 engine that boasts a 12,100rpm redline, which GMA says is the highest of any production car. Working with a 48-volt mild-hybrid system, the V12 produces 487kW of power and 467Nm of torque. While those outputs pale in comparison to the world’s most powerful supercars, the T.50 was designed to deliver the ultimate driving experience.

The carbon-fibre supercar weighs just 986kg, about two-thirds that of its competitors to make it the lightest road-going supercar of the modern era. Add to this rear-wheel drive, a six-speed manual gearbox, forged aluminium double wishbone suspension, and you have a car with the driving purist in mind. It makes for a power-to-weight ratio and agility that begs for a racetrack, while the screaming V12 and manual gear shift provide a sensory-rich driving experience.

The T.50 also has the most advanced aerodynamics yet seen on a road car, aided by a 400mm rear-mounted fan to create downforce — a technology that was once banned in F1 racing because of the advantage it gave drivers.

The concept is based on the Brabham BT46 F1 car Murray designed in 1978 with a fan that in effect sucked it to the road. The incredible downforce it produced was so effective that the Brabham comfortably won its first race in the hands of the late Niki Lauda, but the resultant uproar from rival teams over the unfair advantage saw the car withdrawn from the next Grand Prix and it never raced again.

The T.50 is a track-focused car that can be used every day, says Murray. It has usable luggage space of up to 288l, and a 10-speaker audio system in case you ever get tired of the V12’s growl.

Production is handled at GMA’s facility in Dunsfold, UK, close to Dunsfold Aerodrome.

To mark the start of production, Murray signed the carbon-fibre monocoque chassis used for the first build.

“Designing and engineering the T.50 has been an incredible journey with much of the initial work completed during lockdown, so to witness the engineering art of the first customer car’s carbon-fibre monocoque ready for assembly, less than two-and-a-half years since reveal, is quite magical,” Murray said.

GMA will establish service centres in the UK, Japan, Abu Dhabi, the US, Australia, Bahrain, China, Germany, Singapore, Spain, and Saudi Arabia.