Hi guys!
My Dad was the boss on the McLaren F1, I spent most of my spare time at the facility in Woking in the mid/late '90s. I met Gordon on numerous occasions. Great guy. Loud shirts. Quiet, confident thinker with a jukebox in his office, huge phobia of cockroaches. Legend. I remember flying 4 of us to Le Mans in '95 to see it's debut in the 24 hour race. What amazed me was that the car was never intended to go racing. Gordon had designed it to be the (then) ultimate road car, using his experience designing race cars and using race car tech which was available at the time. Owners wanted to take it racing. Gordon did not, "It was never designed to go racing", he would say. Eventually he bowed to "polite persuasion" (you and I would call it nagging!) and redesigned it to do exactly that, the GTR was born. As a fan of wings and vents, I saw it as a thing of beauty, and an amazing technical achievement. The Sultan of Brunei was equally impressed. "I like it, I'll have seven" (eventually to become 10), "but sir, you know they are £540,000 each?" and the quiet response, "what you have to understand is that me buying seven of these is like you buying a coffee." Eye opening stuff.
The T.50 is reminiscent of the McLaren F1 from so many angles. I know I'm going to upset the purists in saying this but I'm personally not a fan of manual gearboxes in modern performance cars, the delay in changing gears with a conventional stick seems ad odds with the idea of creating a modern performance car. I know Porsche upset the purists when they started to introduce their modern automatics ("they'll never sell!), but their gearbox is the reason that I sold my auto (actually a robotized manual) Lamborghini. I test drove a friend's Porsche and was blown away by the instantaneous gear changes. There was no interruption in power delivery whatsoever. I'm sure it's there, but it was completely imperceptible to me. Porsche now sell 4 times more PDK cars than manuals. Getting back into my own car was like stepping from a Eurofighter into a Lancaster bomber. Still an event, but. . . .
Having said that, I know I'd be extremely happy behind the wheel of a Stratos replica with it's improved reliability and that elusive "grin factor", which seems to be absent in most reasonably priced modern day cars. That side profile! Bring back pop-up headlights! I know they're at odds with modern pedestrian safety regulations, but the legal restrictions on the design of cars as a result is . . .boring. Sorry.
And so, back to the T.50, the engine is going to be a masterpiece swansong to naturally aspirated internal combustion powerplants. 12,100 rpm in just 0.3 seconds, when not connected to the drivetrain, admittedly. Just think about that, for 0.3 seconds.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/35622/...just-3-seconds
All the best to everyone,
Mark
Originally Posted by Willtord
Hi guys!
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks