If you’re anything like us, you’ve been following the progress of the new GMA T.50 with intense interest. This decade is almost certain to produce a slew of supercars - so many, in fact, that it’ll be easy to shrug off many as also-rans. But the three-seat, V12-powered T.50 is not that. For one thing, it is the work of an unarguable genius in the shape of Gordon Murray. For another, it’s the opening salvo of a new Surrey-based British carmaker - one that we’re expecting many more great things from before too long.
Finally there are the constituent parts of what Murray himself has described as the ‘end point’ of the analogue, combustion-powered supercar. It will be super-lightweight, comparatively small in scale, seat its driver in the middle and be fired up the road by a high-revving, manually-geared twelve-cylinder engine. So while it is absolutely not a follow-up to the McLaren F1, there is a fundamental spiritual connection between the 30-year-old ghost of supercar past and Murray’s dramatic, active-aero vision for the near future.
Hence the appearance of both the GMA T.50, and its designer, at last week’s McLaren F1 30th anniversary tour. Because what better backdrop for the car than 13 glossy examples of Murray’s former masterwork - fully six of them in road-going GTR format? We’re told the guv’nor only dropped in for a fleeting visit to the Grand Hotel a Villa Feltrinelli on the shores of Lake Garda, but the pre-production T.50 attended the White Label Events organised tour for a full day - evidently its first proper run on public roads beyond the occasional developmental squirt in the UK.
And doesn’t it look the part away from studio lights or the cloudy skies of a British proving ground? Obviously there’s plenty of work still to do before the T.50 makes it to the manufacturing phase, but our man on the ground said the Cosworth-built V12 already makes itself heard from miles away in an Italian valley - and when that valley includes the competing crescendo of 13 BMW M S70/2 engines, you know it’s going to be special. The tour was supported by McLaren Petersfield, which supplied a 720S as support car (because you need to keep up, right?). Nice to have the world’s preeminent F1 menders on hand. Nice for them to get a look at what comes next in the Murray genealogy; 13 confirmed super fans probably didn’t mind either…
(Images courtesy of Harry Rudd/Natasha Uljanic)
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