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Gordon Murray’s Best Cars, Plus a New T.33, to Star at Goodwood Festival of Speed
This year marks 75 years since the first F1 World Championship race was held at Silverstone, so it’s only natural that the biggest motorsports festivals around the world are picking the anniversary as their theme. Goodwood Festival of Speed (July 10–13) will be no exception, and it is doubling down on with its featured marque: Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA), founded by the man whose name is in the title, a wildly talented designer and engineer of F1 cars.
Outside of the F1 paddock, Gordon Murray is perhaps most famous as the designer of the McLaren F1, a clean-sheet project in which Murray attempted to capture the best possible driving experience. The BMW-powered triple-seater was astoundingly fast, reigning as the world’s fastest production car for 10 years. It wasn’t dethroned until Ferdinand Piëch threw the corporate might of Volkswagen into developing a car that would outrun it, an effort that would produce the Bugatti Veyron. The F1’s race-going brother, the GTR, is a legend: Seven of them entered the 1995 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race that is grueling for both humans and cars alike. Of the seven, five finished, in first, third, fourth, fifth, and thirteenth overall.
We dearly hope that an F1 will be at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. So far, all we know to expect is “iconic Murray-designed road and race cars,” accompanied by the current GMA supercars: T.50, T.50s Niki Lauda, T.33, T.33 Spider. Oh, and a new car that’s based on the T.33.
Exciting though those may be, we’re curious whether any vehicles from GMA’s recently announced Special Vehicles division will be in attendance. This group will focus on bespoke builds, continuation cars and/or restomods, and “Special Vehicles,” possibly new models that will sit alongside the T.50 and T.33. Imagine a built-new F1 at Goodwood—we’ve got our fingers crossed.
Despite not revealing all the cars that will be in attendance, GMA thoughtfully provided some photos to accompany the announcement as a sort of amuse-bouche. The T.1 above, which looks a lot like a Lotus Seven, is stiffer and lighter than the featherweight car it resembles. Murray built it himself, when he started racing in South Africa, because he couldn’t afford to buy a car. He then sold the T.1 and put the money toward a ticket to England, where he pursued a career in design and engineering.
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Murray shone as a race car engineer—he became a chief designer for the Brabham F1 team in 1973 when he was just 26. A year later, the BT44 became Murray’s first Grand Prix-winning design. It would hardly be his last: Murray was also behind the McLaren MP4/4 that won 15 out of 16 races in the 1988 season in the hands of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. In case you’re wondering why Murray didn’t name the T.33 Niki Lauda after one of those guys: Lauda won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix in another Murray design, the BT 46B “fan car,” that was so fast that the rest of the grid got it banned after that one outing.
A year before he joined Brabham, Murray built a race car for Le Mans. It is called the Duckhams Ford LM, and he designed it “in a matter of weeks for the price of £250 and an HP scientific calculator,” according to his company’s Instagram. It finished in 12th, driven by Alain de Cadenet and Chris Craft (no relation to the boat manufacturer).
The F1 may have been Murray’s most famous road car, but the Rocket was his first: a single-seater car powered by a Yamaha engine and gearbox that weighed only 400kg and looked like a ’60s F1 car. Only about 40 were made.
He also designed a tiny little pickup truck called the Ox, intended for developing countries where the best vehicles are simple and tough. Each comes as a kit that can be assembled by three people in about 12 hours. Six of the kits can fit into a single 40-foot shipping container! You can spot the truck in the back of this photo:
If you’d like to read up on Murray’s more recent efforts—the track-honed T.50 with its V-12 engine, manual gearbox, and rear fan, or its road-oriented brother, the fan-less but V-12-powered T.33—click the links. Afterward, tell us below which Gordon Murray design is your favorite, and why!
I’d love to be able to sit in one of these… or better yet, even drive one around a closed circuit.
Amen, brother!
All of his cars are interesting. The F1 is my all time favorite.