He can learn to heel-toe, and make USD3 million, a little bit at a time.
On looks, it's fine. I mean the F1 looked good and still does, but there were and are prettier cars out there. But you don't necessarily buy or drive an F1, or this, for the way it looks. It's fine as long as they don't look too bland or average.
I watched the Carfection video. It's 45 minutes, and I only got the chance to finish off the last half-hour after I came home from work.
A couple of things stood out for me. First was the papaya orange highlight of the interior details in this prototype car
Second, was that this is is absolutely the successor to the McLaren F1. Murray is directly comparing features of the T.50 to what they were able to do and improve upon with the F1, as if he was working for Toyota and comparing leg room and fuel economy numbers with last year's Corolla. Not a spiritual successor. The successor.
We've had cars that succeeded the F1 before, but this is where the third thing comes in which stood out to me: there are many cars out there that are faster and by all objective measures better than the F1. The T.50 is not designed to be better than them; that high-tech mega-dollar horse bolted many years ago. Bugattis, Koenigseggs, Ferraris... the list goes on. Modern hypercars that exceed the F1 are a dime a dozen nowadays. Heck, even the Carrera 4S would challenge it in most endeavours. But that's not what this car is about.
Virtually every design decision presented here is with the sole aim of making this car the most enjoyable boomer chariot ever produced. It's a 1990s hypercar built in the 2020s with modern technology, but with none of the fluff that spoils the purity. It would be like Pink Floyd reforming to make a new version of Dark Side of the Moon and it somehow being just as good as the original album, but you wouldn't get it on Spotify - you'd by a high-definition 192kHz 24-bit audio disc and play it on a dedicated hi-fi using headphones worth $6000.
I mean...
LOOK AT THE PEDALS
JUST LOOK AT THEM
Very nice analogy!
Fail!Originally Posted by Kchrpm
That's the one XHawkeye put in his post!
You could buy a 370Z, it does rev-matched downshifts for you too - thankfully with a switch to turn that feature off (I tried it, it felt wrong to me to be downshifting without blipping the throttle - like I was hurting the car, even though I knew the system was preventing that).
I'm sure this new Cosworth will sound amazing. I doubt it will sound much like the larger V12 in the F1. That engine had a baritone bark that was really, really cool.However, I think I'd prefer the old F1 but with this new Cosworth engine! Would that save me $2 million?
I think Gordon doesn't believe that any of the hypercars that have come since the F1 are better. His philosophy seems to be that "better" has nothing to do with being faster around a track or in benchmarks. Better means improved driver involvement, feel, excitement, usability.... total focus on the driving experience. This philosophy is evident in how softly (relatively speaking) his cars are sprung. They aren't "track day specials." The lengths he goes to achieve lighter weight are impressively thorough, from initial design/engineering concept all the way down to the tiniest detail.
Yeah, it'll be real difficult for me to judge which hypercar is better since I don't think I'll ever get a chance to drive any of those cars... so I'll just have to take your word for these cars or play gran turismo to decide for myself!
Gordon Murray and Adrian Newey are my 2 most favorite designers... pretty sure any car designed by them can't go too wrong... It'd be awesome if someday the 2 could collaborate...
Very cool, I like the way that Gordon Murray consciously stands in the tradition of Colin Chapman. The commitment and ingenuity it takes to chase out excess mass, wherever it might reside, is wonderful to behold. As an example above, the 'obvious' thing would be to make all three pedals in the same way, but in fact the accelerator is thinner, because the force on it will never be as much as the brake or clutch - it doesn't need to be as strong/stiff, so it shouldn't be as heavy.
I remember being interviewed for a job by Steve Randle, who worked on the F1, and him talking me through an example they'd done. I also remember him being scathing about the Veyron and then-current LR Discovery for their weight.
So yeah, really happy to see GM light-ening strike again. The F1 wasn't the best looking of the 90s supercars - that was the XJ220 for me - but the shape was defined by the need to condense those potent ingredients into the smallest possible envelope, and that was justification enough. The T50 is the same, I don't think it looks particularly beautiful but to pack the V12 and three seats into such a small package, and keep the aero working over such a wide dynamic range, is enough. In a sense both cars are like fighter jets, they aren't styled to look nice but to package the mechanicals into a shape that works aerodynamically, with the appropriate stability under varying conditions. I particularly liked the point about making downforce with the underbody venturi so that it's in the centre of the car, rather than trying to balance appendages front and rear.
If I'm going to nit-pick, GM claimed that the air-con was poor on the F1 because the compressor had to survive running at the 8,000 rpm limit, so at idle it wasn't very effective. There are plenty of Japanese cars that had 8,000rpm engines and air con that was adequate for the tropical Japanese summer, even back in the 90s. So I think that's a bit of a convenient excuse ;-)
For the most part yes, but as far as I know, the F1 is still the fastest production car with a naturally aspirated engine...always made me wonder what speeds it could achieve with some boost...we may never know
What's GM's reason against turbos I wonder? Turbo lag? If weight saving's is the ultimate goal, I'd think turbo engines would be lighter?
Anyway, personally I just like high revving NA engines..., but if we were to put feelings aside, shouldn't turbos give weight advantage? (Maybe he explained all this in one of those videos posted? sorry, I just haven't finished watching them...)
The other reason he mentions for the bad a/c was there wasn't adequate air flow out of the cabin.
Yes, he wanted max throttle response, "I also said they had to better the F1's response speed, which was about 10,000 revs a second in neutral." The new motor adds 28,400 revs a second with no load.
Turbos are, essentially, just shit.
They rip out the lovely sound. They kill engine response. They add heaps of lag.
Modern turbos are pretty good. But they suck.
Gimme a crisp, multi-cylinder, small displacement, high-revving, naturally aspirated engine over turbos please.
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