GRR Meets: Gordon Murray On TVR, Lotus... And The Correct Way To Use Carbon

We head to Shalford and the rapidly expanding facilities of Gordon Murray Design (three buildings now, 130 people). We have come primarily to talk TVR – see our story here – but there’s loads of other stuff… such as, the use (and what he says is the misuse) of carbon-fibre these days, his plans for a Gordon Murray Car Collection…and that Lotus XI. 

‘I have lusted after a Lotus XI since I was 10,’ says the man whose F1 cars for Brabham and then McLaren gave both Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna their respective first world championships.

‘I have been looking for the right car for ages and now finally found it. It’s a Club version with windscreen and wiper – it was Chapman’s attempt to convince people this racing car was a road car. That didn’t really work. It was slated in America at the time.’

Murray’s car is a 1958 chassis with Ford 105E engine (‘why I could afford it, basically’), wire wheels and ‘3-inch wide tyres. I think it should be fun…’  It will certainly make a change from the Smart Roadster he usually drives to work in.

A car like the XI does tick the Murray boxes of course – it’s compact, light weight and aerodynamic, recurring themes in the Murray oeuvre that reached its road-car apogee with his McLaren F1. The night before our chat Gordon had been guest of honour at the London Classic Car Show’s tribute to the F1. 

Championship-winning grand prix cars, a supercar that ruled both the roads and, as the F1 GTR, Le Mans…and what does he want to go down in history for? A manufacturing process. No conversation with Murray is ever very far from iStream, the Formula 1-style honeycomb structure that the new TVR will be using when it comes out in 2018.

‘It’s always nice to be recognised for the old stuff, but for most people motor sport is just entertainment, and while the McLaren F1 was a great step forward how many people can really appreciate it? One hundred people in the world. What we are doing now is dramatically changing the way we make cars for everyone…the first step-change since we started pressing steel bodies over 100 years ago.’

The TVR’s honeycomb structure will be sandwiched between carbon, not the glass-fibre he started out with for his first

iStream project, an affordable city car concept for Yamaha. iStream Carbon is informed directly by F1 practice, he says – and there’s more to come, too…

‘I started using monolithic carbon (flat sheets of the stuff – ed) in 1978/9 with Brabham but then McLaren arrived in 1981 with a honeycomb car which was the first use of stabilised carbon panels. Monolithic carbon has advantages over steel but it’s not F1 technology. Just changing sheet metal for sheet carbon the way some expensive supercars do today is the wrong way to use it. A honeycomb structure is the key.’

That’s what the TVR will use… and, if all goes to plan, some much more expensive cars as well. Meet iStream 3: carbon-skinned honeycomb structures on an aluminium frame for Gordon Murray’s ultimate concoction of stiffness, strength and light weight. If it happens, it would mean that his iStream process reaches from the mass market through premium to the super-premium class. ‘The aim is to cover the entire market,’ says Murray.

Any big car companies out there that have impressed him?

‘I think what BMW is doing re lightweighting is good. It has been brave to use carbon the way it has (in the new 7-Series). Mazda has been consistently impressive, with its holistic lightweighting. But a lot of companies aren’t looking to light weight seriously and that worries me. Also sports cars are growing in size, especially width. The Alfa 4C is a sexy looking thing but at nearly 2m wide it’s difficult to drive on UK B-roads.’

And on the powertrain front? Murray is famously no fan of hybrids…

‘Everyone is jumping on the hybrid bandwagon because it is an easy way to cheat the mpg and CO2 tests. If we had more real world testing hybrids would be shown to be pretty dirty things.’

And the Murray Collection? What’s that about?

‘I would love to put together a heritage collection. A T1 and T2 (his first racing specials in which he competed in South Africa, and which he is re-creating) among other racing cars, the Le Mans prototype I designed for Alain de Cadenet and Chris Craft, my own McLaren F1, Mercedes SLR, Rocket and prototypes of everything we have done at Gordon Murray Design – and will do in the future.’

It would make a fascinating collection – right down to one very tasty little Lotus XI…