“You can tell when a car is going to be good. It just feels so good already,” says professor Gordon Murray upon stepping out of the GMA T.50 prototype after a few sighting laps at the Dunsfold Top Gear test track. These are still very early days for the prototype, as it is clearly about as far as you can get from a finished product, and the extremely early engine is still limited to only the first 3,000 revs of its supposed 12,100 rpm limit.
There is a lot of work yet to be done before the 100 “production” two million British pound T.50s can begin.
There are obvious connections between Murray’s legendary McLaren F1 and this new T.50, but he promises that it’s not just a 10 percent better F1. The overall shape and the three-wide arrowhead seating are clearly signatures of the F1 carried over for this new car, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Every piece of this car is bespoke to this car, not carried over or sourced from anywhere else. Some janky old BMW engine wouldn’t suffice for Murray’s T.50.
While this prototype video doesn’t show much in the way of the car’s actual performance, it proves that progress is being made. One of the major complaints I have heard in the car community is that the T.50 unveiled last fall was nothing more than a design concept that didn’t run. Well, now we’ve seen that it runs and drives, and this small team is working hard to get their new hypercar out into the world. To bless us with one last truly analog experience to dream about, that clearly was their mission statement.
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With effectively everyone, including myself, going all-in on electric propulsion, it’s quite possible that the T.50 will be the final ultimate form of internal combustion engine expression before the death of the species. What better way for gasoline-powered cars to go out than with a fucking bang?
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