Gordon Murray T.33 supercar set for public debut on 9 April
79th Goodwood Members’ Meeting will host the public unveiling of the new GMA T.33
Gordon Murray’s £1.37m T.33 supercar will make its public debut next month at the Goodwood motor racing circuit in Sussex.
The new T.33, the second supercar from GMA (Gordon Murray Automotive), is billed as the firm’s less costly and more practical offering and will on display in the Paddock area at Goodwood Motor Circuit alongside the brand’s T.50, and T.50s flagships.
A rival for Ferrari’s upcoming LaFerrari replacement and Koenigsegg’s newest hypercar, the V12-engined T.33 follows GMA’s policy of never producing more than 100 units for a model. Despite its eye-watering price, every example of the T.33 sold out within a week of the initial reveal earlier this year. Production will start in late 2023, before customer deliveres start in 2024.
The T.33 ditches the three abreast seating arrangement used on both the T.50 and the legendary, Gordon Murray-designed McLaren F1. As a result of its more conventional two-seater layout, the T.33 gets its own chassis made from carbon fibre and aluminium, and loses the fan-based aerodynamics of the T.50, resulting in a neater, cleaner shape that’s not covered in the splitters or spoilers of some supercar rivals.
“It’s really a look that’s been in my head for many years - actually from just after we did the McLaren F1,” designer Gordon Murray told us at the car’s January reveal. “It’s absolutely not retro but there are a lot of small influences from my favourite sports racing cars of the sixties - the likes of the Ferrari 206 Dino SP, or the Porsche 904. All of those cars are timeless, really, and that’s what we want to achieve with the T.33. In 20 years’ time, we think it’ll still look good.”
The T.33’s key features include vertically stacked headlights, incorporating neat ‘hard points’ designed for corner impact testing, simple round LED-based tail-lights, and pronounced haunches over the rear wheels. The body colour and the finishes on the ‘blade’ behind the door shutline and the roof-mounted ram-air intake will all be configurable by the customer - leading GMA to suggest that no two examples will be alike. Murray says that the buyer’s experience and level of involvement in the T.33 will be “almost identical” to that enjoyed by T.50 customers, who have, on average, spent more than six hours each in consultations with GMA on their car’s specification.
The new arrival is 4,398mm long - a single millimetre longer than the current Porsche Boxster, but four centimetres longer than the T.50. It retains a version of the hypercar’s Cosworth-developed, 3.9-litre, normally aspirated V12 engine. Weighing just 178kg, the remapped unit has new camshafts, a bespoke ram induction intake set-up and a different exhaust - enough for it to earn a different designation, GMA.2 V12.
The suspension set-up is lightweight double wishbones at the front and rear, and the car sits on forged-aluminium alloy wheels measuring 19-inches (front) and 20-inches (rear). The car is designed to be user-friendly, so it has a realistic ride height of 120mm at the front and 145mm at the rear. The T.33 will be offered in both left- and right-hand drive, and be approved for sale in global markets, including the United States.
Inside, there’s a simple instrument layout with a large, central, analogue rev-counter, and all of the main switches are machined from aluminium alloy. Each car will have its pedal and seating arrangement individually tailored to the customer’s requirements. The T.33 also features side storage lockers, like the T.50, along with a front luggage compartment; the combined boot capacity is 280 litres, roughly equivalent to that of a Ford Fiesta.
Unlike the T.50, which is being made at Dunsfold, the T.33 will be manufactured at Gordon Murray’s new technology campus in Windlesham, Surrey.
We could also see three editions of the T.33 in total: the ‘regular’ version, an open-topped edition that could well be a Targa, and a more extreme T.33s that will be lighter and have a greater track focus, just like the T.50s Niki Lauda. This would expand the total to 300 cars, to be made between 2023 and 2026, and will help GMA to deliver the car at just over half of the price of a T.50.
