Gordon Murray, the renowned designer of the original McLaren F1, now leads his own automaker whose first offerings, the T.50 and T.33 (pictured), were very much similar to the famed V12 supercar in philosophy, (the T.50 even has with the central seating position). However, for the next entries into the Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) lineup, the company will reportedly make an electric SUV.
Well, according to Autocar it will make two of them, but only one will actually be sold under the GMA brand. The other, which we presume will be mechanically related but feature a different body and different interior, is being developed for another automaker, but both vehicles are being designed with a focus on efficiency, lightness and road manners. In the designer’s own words, they will
Change the way we think about range anxiety and vehicle dynamics.
Murray’s obsession to keep vehicles light will imbue these two vehicles through and through, which should make them lighter than similar rival offerings. In the source article, the designer is quoted as saying
It can’t be correct to have family cars routinely weighing 2.5 tons, yet everyone’s piling into the thing the way OEMs do. We think there’s a better way.
And since he mentions this value, we could extrapolate and say one of the two SUVs currently being designed will be larger vehicles - the current Mercedes-Benz EQC weighs nearly 2.5-tons, for instance, so maybe something around that size, but nowhere near as heavy. This lightweight approach isn’t limited to Gordon Murray, though, since Lotus is also working on its own interpretation of an electric rival for a Lamborghini Urus with lots of resources to back it up.
Then again, he could just have used the value to highlight how heavy modern SUVs are, especially electric ones, and not necessarily hint at what the company is currently designing - we’ll have to wait and see...
Gordon Murray does say the first vehicle to be built on the new lightness-focused EV platform will be a little SUV with a compact delivery-van derivative. No confirmation as to when or where this GMA-branded small high-rider will be built, but it will most likely be at the company’s facility in Windlesham, Surrey, which is currently being built and expanded, thanks to some £300 million that is being invested there.
