Automotive

Gordon Murray raises the roof with a V12 T.33 Spider

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Gordon Murray Automotive presents the T.33 Spider supercar
Gordon Murray Automotive
Gordon Murray Automotive presents the T.33 Spider supercar
Gordon Murray Automotive
Gordon Murray with the Cosworth V12. Normally, it goes in the car
Gordon Murray Automotive
As with most, if not all cars, the T.33 Spyder has a back
Gordon Murray Automotive
Best check your shoes for dog poop before driving, or keep a toothbrush handy
Gordon Murray Automotive
If you could rev to 11,000 rpm, you would too
Gordon Murray Automotive
Murray was going to have a paddle-shift option, but refreshingly, nobody wanted one
Gordon Murray Automotive
Saucy swing-out panels open up the luggage boxes. In a perfect world, you'd be able to use them to pick up the kids from school without stopping
Gordon Murray Automotive
Fancy luxury it ain't; this is a car designed by an F1 genius to be driven hard. We hope some of them will be
Gordon Murray Automotive
Wheels come free with every T.33
Gordon Murray Automotive
I always like this angle, it makes them look like Hot Wheels cars
Gordon Murray Automotive
As you can see from this angle, hawking a loogie into this cabin from an overpass will require Jedi-level precision
Gordon Murray Automotive
Aw, it's happy to see me!
Gordon Murray Automotive
That's a tight looking back end
Gordon Murray Automotive
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One of the automotive world's greatest living treasures has unveiled his latest masterwork: an open-top companion to the T.33 supercar, with the same naturally aspirated Cosworth V12 howling at 11,000 rpm. Brace yourself for a brutal comment section.

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.

I always like this angle, it makes them look like Hot Wheels cars
Gordon Murray Automotive

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.

As with most, if not all cars, the T.33 Spyder has a back
Gordon Murray Automotive

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.

Saucy swing-out panels open up the luggage boxes. In a perfect world, you'd be able to use them to pick up the kids from school without stopping
Gordon Murray Automotive

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.

Gordon Murray with the Cosworth V12. Normally, it goes in the car
Gordon Murray Automotive

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

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12 comments
riczero-b
617 bhp and weighs the same as a bag of cheese n onion crisps. Insane. Brilliant.
JPegg
Yeah, electric cars have more power and torque, but with a huge addition of weight (batteries) which severely impacts handling. Sure, 0-60 times look amazing on many electric cars, and I'm a fan (own a Taycan), but for sheer driving pleasure, tossing a lightweight car through corners is much more fun, and THAT is what this car can do better than any electric.
EJ222
Picture this: a fully electric drivetrain, some supercapacitors, and a tiny gas generator in a cheap Lotus Elise/Miata-esque chassis.

You get the low weight of ICE, insane fuel efficiency and acceleration, and low cost from skipping the most expensive parts: big engines and big batteries.

An automaker should make this happen, and put all these silly gas "supercars" to shame.
Adrian Pineda
Remember the Audis from the 1980's? Excluding the original Quattro, nobody collected them, saved them and unlike BMW's, Mercedes and Porsches from the 1970's you don't see them on the road. This is how Electric cars are and likely will continue be. Gas powered V12's, well there are still examples from the 1930's still being driven.
clay
Spare me the moral relativism of rich people toys as slag for parentless kids. Optimism takes many forms, a primary one is the attainment of artful, engineering perfection.

Can't you just be happy that a master genius in the art of engineering mechanical perfection has provided (yet again) a most elegant tool for the purpose of freebasing that most human of ALIVE chemicals, adrenalin?
clay
I wonder if this masterful creation ran on 100% renewal derived hydrogen.. would the whining wankers still lament the horrors of this mechanical symphony?
Catweazle
What a magic thing, infinitely superior to these overblown electric golf buggys.
Super-rapid jumped-up overweight Scalextric cars are all very well, but they've no SOUL.
And who could love something that sounded like a souped-up electric razor...
NavrozeEnduro
I don't have the wherewithal to buy even a screw of this car but will support, appreciate and propagate the likes of Gordon Murray and their designs to the end.
I loved the article and how it describes the Capitalist society, which I agree with but Murray, Porsche, Ferrari and the likes of them will design such things of beauty under any regime.
martinwinlow
*Nothing* demonstrates humanity's mind-numbingly stupid folly better than this.
Hendrik Ehlers
Everyday I drive my 1971 naked Cobra with 392hp. No bumpers, no seat belts, open pipes, no front number sign, no roll bar, zero frills, fuel gauge broken since decades. And yes - the kids picked up at school hop over the closed door while it's rolling. Ant it rocks like nothing else. That T.33 is just some fancy modernist piece of shit..