British company McMurtry Automotive has gone to Goodwood to show off its new Spéirling, a miniature electric hypercar with a Gordon Murray-style fan system in the back capable of generating more than 500 kg (1,100 lb) of downforce at a standstill.
However exactly you're supposed to pronounce it, the Spéirling is a tiny little single-seater designed purely for track use – at least, to start with. Its full-carbon body is just 3.2 m (10.5 ft) long, 1.05 m (3.4 ft) high and 1.5 m (4.9 ft) wide, all the better to cut through air more efficiently.
It's powered by a rear wheel drive two-motor e-axle system of McMurtry's own design, running off a 60-kWh battery pack kept low and central. Final power figures aren't yet available, but the company promises it'll offer at least one horsepower per kilogram of weight, with the final weight figure under 1,000 kg (2,205 lb). It'll be enough power, the company says, to comfortably escort you from 0 to 300 km/h (0-186 mph) in less than nine seconds.
In order to put that kind of power down through just two poor 240-section rear tires – and indeed to help it pull serious cornering G-forces with such a narrow wheelbase – McMurtry has decided to run 80-horsepower fans under the car, which can generate more than 50 percent of the car's weight in downforce even before it starts moving.
The only other car on the market right now that's doing this sort of thing is Gordon Murray's very un-electric T.50, with its screaming Cosworth V12 and ground-sucking fan arrangement. Interestingly, Murray's monster also weighs less than 1,000 kg.
Where most electric cars are very quiet, the Spéirling's fan system makes quite a racket – 120 decibels' worth of jet turbine-like racket, McMurtry tells AutoTrader in a recent video interview, or some 30 decibels louder than the law lets you run a new car in Detroit. That's a proper din – indeed, one that might not be welcome on some race tracks – but McMurtry still sees it as a "happy accident" that adds a touch of missing drama to the electric performance car world.
This'll be fun: "McMurtry intends to launch an assault on a number of world records with the Spéirling demonstrator in the coming year," says the website, and we don't doubt a machine like this might have a genuine stab at some of the Volkswagen ID.R's records. Get this thing to the Nurburgring post-haste!
We don't know when or where it'll launch, or how much it'll cost; the Spéirling is still an early stage prototype with some work ahead of it. But you can sure see that epic downforce at work in the video below, as it heads very briskly up the hill at Goodwood. Enjoy! (This car appears at 3:10)
Source: McMurtry Automotive