Gordon Murray's three cylinders of fury

Friday, 27 March 2020

Gordon Murray, architect of the McLaren F1 supercar, has given us yet another teaser of his next project, the T.50.

This time it's a short video of a 'development engine' screaming its heart out on a test bed - you can check it out above.

While the development engine is only a three-cylinder unit, the final engine will be a naturally aspirated 3.9-litre V12 that will rev to 12,100rpm and develop 484kW of power and 450Nm of torque.

Yep, that's a fan in between the exhaust pipes. It works too, apparently.

That might not sound like much in today's age of 800kW-plus electric hypercars but consider this - the T.50 will weigh just 980kg. We're not sure if this is wet or dry but either way, that's a light machine.

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If you're thinking 'a fan's been done before', you'd be right - by Murray on a Brabham F1 car.

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According to the official website, the T.50 will boast a power-to-weight ratio of 663hp per tonne, 'exceeding that of any other naturally aspirated sports car designed for the road.' Big call, given the 865kW Aston Martin Valkyrie is road legal and also uses a naturally aspirated V12, albeit with an electrical boost via its hybrid system.

The T.50 is a mid-engined three-seater featuring 'motorsport-inspired technologies,' a 3.9-litre V12 and a casual 400mm ground-effect fan, which 'enhances the innovative aerodynamics to be the most advanced ever seen on a road car.'

Yeah, it sucks the thing to the road to allow faster cornering.

If the fan looks familiar, that's because it has already appeared on another Gordan Murray-designed car: the 1978 Brabham BT46B Formula 1 car.

The 'Fan Car' as it became to be known as debuted at the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix as a mid-season update of the BT46 and featured a large fan at the rear that was ostensibly for cooling (to satisfy the regulations), but was primarily to create massive amounts of downforce by sucking the air out for under the car.

The fan car was Murray's response to Colin Chapman's successful 'ground effect' Lotus that used the venturi effect to suck the cars to the ground - something the BT46 couldn't do because of its wide Alfa Romeo flat-12 engine.

As a result, the BT46 was dominant in the single race it competed in and despite numerous protests from other teams, was deemed to be legal by the FIA. The team voluntarily withdrew it after that single race, however, because - according to Murray - the team owner had political aspirations within F1.

That team owner's name? Bernie Eccleston…