I'll admit, I'm a little tentative to throw this lovingly crafted machine to you savages in the comments section. When the hard-top T.33 was launched, New Atlas readers ripped it to shreds. "OMG," led an exasperated Guzmanchinky. "Why are they still building V12 supercars when any electric can spank them into next week?"
BeeCurious jumped in with "Yawn. It’s a carbon-farting dinosaur. Slow, dirty and immoral." Vince called it "Way over priced for a sluggish sports car," and Nelson Hyde Chick laid a steel-capped boot into tender flesh with "just another overcompensation device for lesser-endowed rich guys."
I can't argue with any of that. I've spent most of the last couple of years trying to shine a light on tech that could help push us toward zero carbon emissions by 2050. US$2.36 million-dollar, limited-production, petrol-guzzling supercars are morally indefensible, however cool they look and however devilishly they might attack a set of remote mountain twisties.
From a planetary perspective, it's a perverse quirk of capitalism that a man of Gordon Murray's talents is playing tuba on the Titanic, building gleaming collection-stuffers to help onanistic bazillionaires double their grubby investment dollars when he could at least be bucketing some water out, applying his extraordinary knowledge of F1 aerodynamics and lightweighting somewhere that might actually help.
But you certainly can't blame the guy, he's living an engineer's dream, building cars with his own freakin' name on them – and ones he's happy to put his name on. He's making the fewest compromises he can, throwing outrageous challenges at some of the world's greatest engine developers and playing with fun nerdy aero stuff like the ground-sucking fan in the T.50. And people are prepared to back up a B-double to pay for it.
And he's made another car now. Or at least pulled the top off the last one. He's had to rebuild the back bit to keep it slippery, with some swoopy new bodywork. And with the roof off, you can slide the glass back of the cabin down into the body, for a cleaner listen to that engine as it bounces off the kind of rev limit you'd expect on a motorcycle, not a 609-horsepower, 3.9-liter V12.
As for the roof, well, it's a bit low-tech compared to the rest of the thing; a pair of carbon composite panels you have to pull off by hand and plonk in the frunk. Fear not, there's room elsewhere for whatever rich people get at the grocery store. Great bags of truffles mainly, I imagine, and Grey Poupon and magazines about themselves. These can go in the 180 liters of storage available when you pop out the side panels, a saucy little maneuver that will raise eyebrows at Tesco.
He's only making 100, naturally, and they cost a livable apartment more than the ones you can't pop the roof off of, and you probably can't have one anyway. There are further details; if you like this sort of thing, hop into the video below and while away half a frothy hour of 4-time IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti, MBE, and a very chuffed Gordon Murray foaming themselves over every detail of the T.33 Spider.
If you don't, then pull on your shoulder-length gloves and get deep into the comments section below. I don't have a dog in this fight – I think it looks cool, I'm drawn to obsessive engineers and I like fast, pretty, shouty things, but I don't rate my chances of ever seeing one in the flesh, and objectively I agree that this and every other supercar, fancy watch and superyacht should probably be melted down and used to build orphanages.
So do your worst, you lovable brutes. All I ask is this: if you're going to take a steaming dump on this personable, Hawaiian-shirted genius and his beautiful new motor car, please at least take the time to make it entertaining. Heck, he might even read it himself!
Source: Gordon Murray Automotive
