Three seats, a V12, and a manual transmission: The GMA T.50 reveal (2025)

On Tuesday, Gordon Murray finally revealed his latest creation to the world. It's called the T.50, and in an age of heavy hybrid hypercars, near-instantaneous semiautomatic gearboxes, and driver-flattering electronic safety nets, it is a refreshing alternative with a minimum of electronic frippery; it even uses an H-pattern gearshift with an actual clutch pedal. But that makes sense when you consider Murray's last supercar: the McLaren F1. While many of us consider that car the greatest of all time, Murray disagrees—he describes the T.50 as improving on his mid-'90s masterpiece "in every conceivable way."

From the perspective of a car nerd of a certain age, Murray ranks up there with the greatest of the industry's greats. The bulk of his career was spent in Formula 1, where he designed cutting-edge, championship-winning cars for Brabham and then McLaren. After tiring of the racetrack, he turned his attention to detail to road-going sports cars, designing first the Light Car Company Rocket and then the McLaren F1, a three-seat V12 riot in carbon fiber that shattered records for acceleration, top speed, and list price, as well as blitzing the field in the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans.

After leaving McLaren, he set his sights on making the process of building cars more sustainable and created a new production process called iStream that would allow cars to be made with 60-percent less energy. But he didn't forget about sports cars. Murray designed a new car for TVR, although frankly at this point, the odds seem remote that it will ever enter production. And he also decided to revisit the supercar, this time forming a company bearing his own name to build it.

We've been following the development of the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 for some time, particularly the car's cutting-edge active aerodynamics and the insanely high-revving, naturally aspirated V12 engine that Cosworth has created for it. But until now, we haven't really been able to see what the car itself looks like. The answer, it turns out, is a little bit like a McLaren F1, with maybe a hint of Porsche 918 to the front. At the rear, it's dominated by that 400mm fan, which speeds the air up as it travels underneath the T.50's sculpted underbody and out past the rear diffuser, generating significant downforce without the need for a honking big wing.

Murray first experimented with a fan to boost downforce via ground effect in the Brabham BT46B. (That was back in 1978 when he built on Jim Hall's Chaparral 2J race car from 1970.) Here, the T.50's fan is driven by a 48V electric motor rather than the engine (as was the case with the BT46B and F1) or a separate engine (from a snowmobile, no less) like the 2J. In addition to creating aerodynamic grip, the fan can also create a ram air effect to temporarily boost the V12's power up to 690hp (514kW).

The T.50 also features a pair of active rear spoilers that can either angle down by 10˚ in a "streamline mode" to reduce the draggy wake at the rear for better fuel efficiency and a higher top speed, or the spoilers can angle up to boost downforce (at +10˚) or enhance the car's braking ability (when angle of attack moves to 45˚).

The link to the McLaren F1 is probably most apparent when you open one of the dihedral doors and look inside. As with the mid-'90s icon, this car puts the driver literally front and center, with a passenger seat to either side and a little further back. The big gearstick—made from titanium, naturally—emerges from a panel of switches to the driver's right, which probably means the left-side passenger seat is the one you want if a T.50 owner ever offers you a ride. And Ars readers will be glad to know there is not a single touchscreen in the T.50—all the controls are analog, as is the big tachometer directly in front of the driver.

Less visible, but probably more apparent to the driver, will be the T.50's mass, or lack thereof. Like the F1, the T.50 is a small car; at 171 inches (4,352mm) long and 72.8 inches (1,820mm) wide, it's roughly the same size as a Porsche 718. But with a curb weight of 2,174lbs (986kg), it's lighter than pretty much every car on the road other than an Ariel Atom or Caterham 7. It's actually even lighter than the F1 itself, which tips the scales at a beefy 2,509lbs (1,138kg). To achieve that, Murray insisted on components that are as light as possible, down to individual nuts, bolts, and washers.

Just 100 T.50s will be built, with the first cars being delivered in 2022. And if you want one, you'll need $2.6 million (plus taxes).

Listing image by Gordon Murray Automotive