Gordon Murray’s next car is ‘Project 3’, and it’ll come with a V12
Gordon Murray’s next car is ‘Project 3’, and it’ll come with a V12
Gordon Murray’s next model will come with a V12. End of transmission.
For those who haven’t run off to find the requisite funds, there’s still time. New boss of the Gordon Murray Group, Phillip Lee, told TopGear.com that they’ve only just begun.
“We’re working on ‘Project 3’, we’re just starting, and we will use the V12 and keep going with that,” he said. It’ll be a global car – just like the T.33, produced in both right- and left-hand-drive. Indeed, “all future cars will be global cars”, Lee said.
The new supercar follows the ground-breaking T.50 featuring a 654bhp naturally aspirated 3.9-litre V12, and its follow-up T.33 - same V12 but with a bit less power (607bhp) and a more conventional seating layout.
Lee noted how the team have learned a lot about the V12, “about cooling and performance and the high rev range”. He noted that even though T.33 revved to 11,100rpm – less than T.50 which peaks at 12,100rpm - it’s “phenomenal”. Still one of the highest-revving supercars ever made.
“The amazing thing is, and you probably wouldn’t realise it, Gordon has cars [planned] right the way through into mid-2033,” Lee said. “There’s no shortage of ideas in terms of what we’re doing and where we’re going.”
There’ll be two more T.33 models that’ll be launched towards the end of the year, and the team is focused on getting the T.50 into customer hands, too. “We’re already seeing a huge amount of people with names and expressions of interest,” Lee said of Project 3, “which is really unprecedented. We’re sort of blown away really – we never get complacent about that. It’s a real privilege to be part of that team.”
A privilege to get one of Murray’s cars, too. The “halo” T.50 was limited to 100 units, with a further 25 T.50s track-only specials planned. The T.33 is limited to 100 cars as well, and in fact all future Murray cars will be.
“We will never make more than 100 of any given range,” Lee told TG. “We’ll stay absolutely true to that. So if you’re on the list and you bought one of the cars, then you can be assured we’re not going to have a variant with different arches and call it something else. It’s not happening.”
The difference in cars isn’t so much flowing ‘down’ from the T.50 halo car, but more associated with the different variants that emerge from it; perhaps make them a bit quicker or bunch up the models a bit closer. “We wanted to make the price point a lot more - I mean it’s still expensive - but a lot more accessible. We are efficient because we’ve learned a lot more, so we’ve passed that learning through.”
However, the exclusivity of the 100 units-per-range “will always remain part of the DNA”. He stressed that the point wasn’t to return profits for shareholders, but to focus on “product and reputation and brand". And a level of detail the customer might not even appreciate.
“I’m from a finance background,” Lee said, “and I could have chopped loads of costs out of this car [the T.33] in order to drive [the cost] down, but it’s important for the brand. It’s important for the product and [chopping costs] would have devalued what we’re going to do.
“The customer would never have known that every single bolt on the car is titanium. We could have got away with a lot that people wouldn’t have even known about, but only perhaps over the course of time, but we don’t do that. We focus on detail.”
One detail we do know is that Gordon Murray’s next model will come with a V12. End of transmission.
