GMA T.50: the last of Gordon Murray’s ‘analogue’ designs

There’s a guy, he’s thirty-five. Let’s call him Marcus.

When Marcus was ten, he caught his first glimpse of a Gordon Murray creation. It was the McLaren F1, and it became the subject of his obsession. He got the posters, the cutouts, the whathaveyous, anything and everything to fuel his desire. Whatever it took, he was going to get behind the wheel of this beautiful car.

He works hard, gets through college and qualifies. He puts in the hours, climbs the ladder, edges his peers out. Every day, as soon as he rises, he stands by and stares at his McLaren F1 poster. Every day, before bed, he closes his eyes and imagines what it would be like to drive one. Manifestation 101.

He’s well aware that he’d have to pay upwards of $15 million dollars to get one. This doesn’t hinder him. It spurs him on.

Year in, year out, on NYE he tells himself: “This is it. This is the year I get my McLaren F1.”

Until one fine day, twenty five years to the day he first fell in love, he comes across another 3-seat hypercar with central driving position, almost 20 per cent of the F1’s price. And guess what? It’s a Gordon Murray creation.

The GMA T.50 is everything the F1 is and was, and more. Naturally aspirated V12 engine mated with a 6-speed manual gearbox, central driving position flanked by 2 passenger seats, accessible through gullwing-opening doors.

And at 980 kgs, Murray’s achieved his lifelong mission of creating a sub-1000 kg super car, yielding a power-to-weight ratio of 1.5 kgs per horsepower.

GMA T.50: all you can ask for and more

We all know that the F1 was ahead of its time. It didn’t rely on massive rearwings and the like to improve aerodynamics and deliver downforce. It used a fan system, inspired by Murray’s 1978 Brabham BT46B “fan car”, that ensured the F1 remained grounded at speeds exceeding 350 km/h.

You see, the fan extracts turbulent air from the top of the underbody diffuser, removing this disrupted boundary layer. So, at low speeds, the fan will do all the work, generating more downforce by creating a more efficient diffuser.

Murray’s never been a fan of the wings, believing that the car’s downforce becomes a slave to the car’s speed. As he explains, if you’re doing 240 km/h on the German autobahn, downforce will increase with the square of the speed. This will then use up all of the suspension travel, and render the car uncomfortable as you draw near the bump rubbers. Not to mention using engine power to tow all that drag around.

The GMA T.50 has a “streamline mode” to mitigate for this, minimising downforce and using the fans to create a ‘virtual longtail’ that results in 12.5 per cent less drag. Murray also claims that the new 15.7, 11.4-hp, 48-volt electric fan generates up to 50 per cent more downforce, and chops 33 feet off the braking distance from 240 km/h.

A revolutionary Cosworth engine

In a day where supercar brands are focused on hybrids and EVs, Murray wanted to push the boundaries of a naturally aspirated V12 internal combustion engine further.

He put the engineering team to the challenge, asking for an engine that could match the F1’s BMW S70/2 6.0L 618 horsepower, but lighter, with more revs than the LCC Rocket’s 11,500 rpm and an improved response speed over the F1’s 10,000 revs in neutral.

Using gear-driven valvegear coupled with titanium valves and connecting rods, Cosworth smashed the weight, power and rev targets and then some. Seriously, how does the man motivate his teams?

The engine weighs 87 kgs less than the F1’s BMW engine, makes 654 bhp, and has a 12,100 rpm redline. As you can see, no belts. The icing on the cake? It’s capable of adding 28,400 revs a second with no load. Ho-ly Shit.

And if that’s too much for you, Murray asked Cosworth to build a detuned version of the engine offering a mere 9,000 “Ferrari revs” per minute (said with a smirk).

Not only is the new GMA T.50 super revtastic, it also excels in traction, producing 70 per cent of its maximum156 kg-ft of torque at just 2500 rpm.

Spindling away

A little mechanics for you. The spindle ties together the control arms, ball joints, springs and steering system, and provides a mount for the wheel assembly.

Now as the car moves, the wheel pushes the spindle up and down, and the steering rotates it vertically right and left. Motion transmits through the ball joint and control arms, as well as the steering components and stabiliser assemblies.

One of Murray’s pet peeves from his F1 days is unwanted spindle movement in the wrong direction.

Ever the perfectionist, he managed to find a solution for this too, searching far and wide for a new switchgear, finally finding a company that could build a switch with no spindle play. You won’t find this on any other mainstream car out there.

Last of its kind

Here’s the bottom line. Murray didn’t build this car to top the horsepower, top speed or aerodynamic downforce charts. There are cars out there with vaster numbers across these categories.

What we have here is a car for the purists. No turbos, no massive wings, no fancy twin clutch gearbox. Nada.

This one’s simple: a naturally-aspirated top-of-the-range engine in a very successful marriage with the glorious 6-speed manual gearbox. Like freshly squeezed OJ, never, ever from concentrate.

Wherever Marcus is, let’s hope that he, and the 106 others who’ve already put the dough down for this unique sports car, will enjoy every minute of Gordon Murray’s last ‘analogue’ creation.

#ICYMI, here’s the cinematic reveal of Murray’s GMA T.50.