California in August has turned into a fixed point in the Gordon Murray calendar. Last year the lawn at The Quail carried two debuts from the Surrey company at the same time, the S1 LM and the Le Mans GTR, twelve cylinders in each of them. This year the firm returns to Monterey Car Week with a machine that has not been seen anywhere in the world before, and it will stand in the middle of the Gordon Murray display as its centrepiece. The covers come off on 14 August. We are talking about the newest model from Gordon Murray Special Vehicles, the division that takes care of the most exclusive cars carrying this name, the ones built light and built around the person behind the wheel.
The road that leads to this unveiling begins in 2025, with the launch of the S1 LM, the first model to come out of Special Vehicles and still the most exclusive car the company has attached its name to. No less than five examples were built. Under the bodywork of each one sits a bespoke power aggregate, a 4.3-litre V12 producing 720 PS, developed for this car and for nothing else, and everything around it follows the principle this operation has never let go of, which is low weight first and the driver at the centre of the whole exercise. Five cars, and that is the entire run.
Then came the auction result. Last year one of those five cars sold for $20.6 million, a record-setting figure and a new mark for a car of the current era! It pointed straight at the demand around the marque, and that demand shows itself in a second way, because every programme the company has announced up to now has been sold out in full. In addition to that, Franchitti puts the American side of it plainly: a large share of what the company builds is headed for the United States, which is why, in his words, Car Week "always feels like a second home".
The reveal itself will be hosted by two men. The first is Professor Gordon Murray CBE, Group Executive Chairman, whose name the whole operation carries. The second is Dario Franchitti MBE, three times a winner of the Indianapolis 500 and now part of the development side of these cars. Professor Murray, ahead of the event: "It is always a pleasure to return to California, and I am looking forward to sharing our latest Special Vehicles creation with everyone attending The Quail and enthusiasts around the world. We have been working on something very special – I can't wait for the covers to come off."
Sharing the display with the new car will be the Le Mans GTR, which had its own first showing on this same lawn twelve months ago. The thinking behind it goes back to Professor Murray's affection for the longtail endurance racers, and the engine is a high-revving Cosworth V12. Light structure and a machine built around its driver are the two constants of the house, and the Le Mans GTR is the reading of them where nothing has been compromised. This year it arrives in a different condition. The car going to California is XP1, an Experimental Prototype, and it is not a display object any longer, because it runs and it has been running. Recent months took it up the Hill at Goodwood, and in July it took its first dynamic outing at the Le Mans Classic. Next to this, Franchitti reports major progress on both the Le Mans GTR and the S1 LM since the pair of them were uncovered here last summer, and the GTR is the one he has been driving himself, working through what the company calls Driving Perfection, the quality it holds every car under this badge has to arrive at as well.
Set out around the central exhibit on the lawn there will be something else worth the walk. A selection of T.50 supercars belonging to customers is being gathered there, and the chance to stand in front of several examples of this V12 machine at one time is a rare one, even in a week like this one. These are private cars in the hands of the people who ordered them, on the grass a few steps away from whatever is waiting under the cover in the middle of the stand. The T.50 has had its acclaim already, and needs no introduction to anybody walking past it.
Franchitti's own account of where the new car stands is brief. It will, in his words, "soon join them on the road to production", the them being the S1 LM and the Le Mans GTR, both of which have moved on considerably since the last time this company set up on the same grass. Everything else stays where it is until the weekend, under a cover, in the middle of California, with a running Cosworth-engined prototype on one side of it and a row of privately owned V12s on the other. On the morning of 14 August the two men hosting the reveal take hold of that cover, and the newest car from Surrey sees daylight.
