McLaren F1 REBORN for the 21st Century with the Gordon Murray T50

Gordon Murray Automotive release the first look at the T50 Hypercar, a 21st century take on Murray’s most iconic car – the McLaren F1.

Gordon Murray has done many splendid things in his career, but the career-defining project was undoubtedly the creation of the McLaren F1.

For a while, it looked like Gordon Murray wanted to forget his mammoth achievement with the F1 as he turned his attention to creating featherweight City cars, but the creation of Gordon Murray Automotive changed that.

Murray teased the idea of a 21st century McLaren F1 back in 2017, a showcase for his iStream production process, with advanced aerodynamics, aluminium sandwiched with carbon fibre to deliver strength and lightness, a roof air scoop and the expectation of a small 3-pot hybrid powertrain.

Now, eighteen months on, Gordon Murray has decided it’s time to deliver more about his new car, and it’s so much more interesting than we thought in 2017.

The only image we have of the T50 from Gordon Murray is the one above, but it shows an almost retro supercar which looks not a million miles away from the F1.

Not only does it have a modern F1 look, it comes with a three-seat configuration, a new, naturally-aspirated, 3.9 litre V12 from Cosworth with 650bhp which can rev to 12,000rpm, a manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive. And it weighs under 1000kg.

There’s also a 400mm fan at the back of the car to deliver downforce without masses of ugly bodywork appendages, harking back to the Brabham F1 car whose fan-delivered downforce was so successful.

Gordon Murray has plans to build just 100 T50 Hypercars, each expected to cost around £2 million, with deliveries from 2022.