Thank Frankel it's Friday: Gordon Murray's latest golden egg

You have designed home built specials, tiny city cars and motorcycles. You have designed and led design teams responsible for multiple Formula One world championships including what remains to this day the single most successful F1 car of all, the McLaren MP4/4. You have designed supercars for other people, relaunched an entire brand of British sportscar (TVR) thought to have gone for good and you have developed your own manufacturing process that could revolutionise the way manufacturers build cars. And, of course, there is your masterpiece, the McLaren F1, the car that advanced road car performance more than any other before or since, did so while offering space for three and their luggage, yet was no bigger than a Porsche 911. Never intended to race, it won Le Mans at the first time of asking, conferring upon McLaren an accolade up until that moment held only by Ferrari. You are 71 years old.

Time, you might think, to pause and reflect on a life’s work quite exceptionally done. And he has. He kindly invited me to his private One Formula exhibition at Dunsfold a week ago today and walking past over 40 of his designs left me in no doubt as to the extraordinary contribution Gordon has made to both the road and racing car arenas. Other than the above, highlights for me included the Duckhams Ford sports racing car he designed as a complete unknown aged just 24 in which his buddies Chris Craft and Alain de Cadenet drove to 12^th place at Le Mans in 1972. Then there was the Brabham BT46B fan car (which contrary to popular belief was never banned because Gordon pulled it before it could be, not least because the replacement he was working on looked like it could pull more g than the driver’s head could withstand…) and the Light Car Company Rocket be developed for Craft. I well remember driving a Rocket to North Yorkshire and to this day I don’t think I’ve driven a more focussed, incisive or involving road car. 

But now he has done that, far from donning pipe and slippers, Gordon Murray is embarking on a new grand adventure, creating for the first time a car under his own name or, to be precise, the IGM brand – Ian Gordon Murray. Actually and to be completely accurate it’s not the first IGM as his very first two-seat specials were IGMs too, but this one is likely to be rather different.

Little has been divulged about it at present though he has formed a new company called Gordon Murray Automotiveto create it and it will be designed and built at his new premises at the Dunsfold test track. A teaser image shows a clearly mid-engined coupe with his distinctive roof snorkel. As with every Gordon Murray car, you can count on lightness of weight being the overarching design theme and an all new version of his trademark iStream production process called ‘Superlight’ has been developed for it. This replaces many of the steel components in the tubular chassis with high strength aluminium to which composite panels are then bonded to provide exceptional strength and rigidity for the weight. 

You can also expect the car to be small and exceptionally well packaged – Gordon loathes huge cars that are profligate with space and weight – and to be powered by a compact engine providing performance that probably won’t break any road car records like the F1, but will instead focus on providing the owner with an unrivalled driving experience in a car that is nevertheless sufficiently civilised to be used regularly.

And, for now at least, that’s all we know. Gordon has refused to be drawn on further mechanical details such as what size and type of engine it will have, as well as matters like cost and likely delivery time. All I can say with certainty is that based on everything I saw at the One Formula exhibition and having got to know him reasonably well over the last 25 years, the wait is likely to be worth it.