Gordon Murray T.50 REVEALED: a 21st McLaren F1 and antidote to bloated, shouty hypercars

The Gordon Murray T.50 is revealed as Murray’s follow-up to the McLaren F1, with a naturally aspirated V12 and low weight. Just 100 being built.

It’s getting on for 30 years since Gordon Murray designed the McLaren F1 to be the ultimate supercar, since when it’s all gone downhill, in Murray’s eyes, as supercars got bigger, heavier and shoutier and with ever-bigger engines and adornments.

So Gordon Murray has set out to remedy all that’s wrong with modern supercars by taking all that was right with the McLaren F1 and bringing it all forward 30 years. And the result is the Gordon Murray T.50.

There is no mistaking the ancestry of the T.50, with looks that scream McLaren F1, a compact size – it’s about as long as a Porsche Cayman – a lack of adornments and a three-seat F1-style interior seating arrangement.

Both the chassis and body are carbon fibre (and weigh less than 150kg) and the only real ‘adornment’ is a ground-effect fan at the back to increase downforce and force more air in to the engine.

Under the clear roof which stretches down the back of the T.50 sits what Murray says is the lightest V12 engine in a road car ever, built by Cosworth and redlining at 12,100 rpm, it’s just under 4.0 litres in displacement, produces 654bhp (up to 690bhp with ram induction) and sends power to the back through a bespoke six-speed manual gearbox from Xtrac.

Murray says the T.50 isn’t about the highest top speed or the quickest 0-62mph, but about lightness (the T.50 weighs in at under a tonne) and purity and a visceral response.

Gordon Murray plans to build just 100 T.50s, each costing £2.83 million in the UK – about twice, in real terms, what the McLaren F1 cost new – with first cars arriving in 2022.

And such is the demand for the modern F1 almost two-thirds of the T.50 run is already sold. But then, it is at least 80 per cent cheaper than a McLaren F1 is now.