Gordon Murray’s T.33 Supercar Revealed with 607-HP V-12 and a Manual
When Gordon Murray Automotive launched the spectacular T.50, the company’s famous founder told C/D it was the start of a series rather than a one-off. The T.50’s inspiration from Murray’s most famous roadgoing design, the McLaren F1, was obvious—but so was its position at the very top of the market given a $2.5 million price tag.
The GMA T.33 you are seeing here for the first time is less radical but also considerably cheaper: $1.85 million at current exchange rates. Yet beneath its elegant exterior it is shaping up to be different from every other supercar. The T.33 loses the T.50’s central driving position and ground-effective fan-assisted aerodynamics but keeps the otherwise unique combination of a high-revving naturally aspirated V-12 engine and the option of a manual transmission.
The lack of wings or intakes come from Murray’s commitment to elegant minimalism. “There is nothing on this car that doesn’t have a function,” he said when C/D got a preview of the car at GMA’s new HQ in Surrey, England in early January. “Point at anything on the car and it has a function.” We pointed at the GMA logo behind the side glass, only to discover it is actually the hidden handle for the dihedral-opening door.
While the T.33 is slightly heavier than the T.50, it will still be lighter than any rival. Carbon bodywork is mounted to a new central structure which uses honeycomb carbon-fiber panels bonded to an aluminum framework. Murray says the development team’s exacting “mass track” meetings, where the weight of every component is carefully scrutinized, means the T.33 should weigh just 2400 pounds, only 220 more than the T.50.
Suspension is by unequal-length control arms at each corner, these mounting directly to the gearbox at the rear. Unlike pretty much every other supercar from the last 20 years, the T.33 does without adaptive dampers. The T.33 doesn’t even have a rear anti-roll bar.
The Cosworth-built engine is closely related to the one in the T.50 (and the track-only T.50S Niki Lauda) but doesn’t have quite such a stratospheric redline. The dry-sump 65-degree 4.0-liter V-12 uses gear-driven camshafts, making its peak 607 horsepower at 10,500 rpm. The rev limiter is set at 11,100 rpm (the T.50’s is 1000 rpm higher). While peak torque of 332 pound-feet comes at a predictably lofty 9000 rpm, the company claims that around 250 pound-feet of torque is available at 2500 rpm to help with drivability. According to Murray the engine weighs just 392 pounds. Air is fed to the engine through four throttle bodies and a ram induction box, with the periscope intake behind the passenger compartment mounted to the engine rather than the body and therefore able to move separately when the car is revved. That’s right: this is a supercar with a shaker hood.