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Slamming into a two-metre high pile of gravel is actually one of the milder tests the Gordon Murray Automotive T.50 hypercar gets put through in the video.
Warning: if you are a car-lover with a squeamish disposition, then you probably shouldn’t watch the latest video from Gordon Murray Automotive.
Part of the testing and development for any car sees the safety systems being rigorously tested, including the airbag calibration, which is essential for ensuring they go off when they are needed, but also ensuring they don’t go off when they aren’t.
And that is exactly what we see happing to Gordon Murray’s latest superfast creation – the $5 million T.50 hypercar.
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The T.50 is the 50th car legendary designer Gordon Murray has designed in his 50-year career. You might be able to guess where its name came from.
You might think “airbag calibration testing” sounds like something that would happen in a lab somewhere, with lots of computer simulations and the like, but, no – they just drive it into and over things. Seriously.
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Set to the dulcet tones of former IndyCar champ and current Scotsman, Dario Franchitti (seriously, that man must have the most restful and relaxing voice in the world…), the T.50 validation prototype XP1 is subject to all sorts of awful impacts and indignities at the Automotive Testing Papenburg (ATP) in Germany, just to ensure its airbags know when something is really an accident, or just ham-fisted parking or a crappy road.
If you are the sort of person who gets upset when you scuff an alloy wheel on a kerb, then look away when the video gets to the “Steel Beam Test” that simulates slamming the wheel face into a kerb hard enough to break a tie rod and damage a tyre.
Other tests included running the T.50 into – and then up – a two-metre high pile of gravel at 30kph (no airbags went off, but the T.50 was utterly beached at the top of it), the 60kph run over some Belgian cobblestones and another at the same speed over a speed bump, a simulated pothole strike for “anyone who has the misfortune of driving on UK roads,” and a fake railway crossing that generates lots of sparks, but no airbag deployments.
The ramp test the fires the hypercar off a 250mm-high ramp at 70kph, then there’s savage washboard at 80kph, and finally, slamming into a “simulated wild boar” at 70kph.
The T.50 is legendary McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray’s latest masterpiece, and is so named because it is the 50th car he has designed in his 50-year career. Essentially a greatest hits package of Murray’s iconic innovations, the T.50 features the F1’s central seating position, ground-effect aerodynamics and the Brabham BT46B F1 car’s rear-mounted aerodynamic fan.
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Father of the mighty McLaren F1, Gordon Murray introduces the all-new T.50 supercar.
Murray wanted the T.50 to be a completely “analogue” experience, hence there are no turbos, superchargers or electric motors on the engine, no wings or scoops on the bodywork and it is only be available with a six-speed manual transmission.
The T.50 weighs less than a Suzuki Swift and is powered by a bespoke 3.9-litre naturally-aspirated V12 that pumps out 488kW. Developed by Gordon Murray Automotive and engine building legends Cosworth, the new V12 revs out to a staggering 12,100rpm, making it the highest-revving naturally-aspirated road car engine ever produced.
And if you are thinking that after seeing all that rigorous testing you might just get one, you are out of luck – Murray is only making 100 examples of the T.50, and even at $5 million a pop, it sold out within 48 hours of going on sale…
