Gordon Murray Special Vehicles Pays Tribute to Le Mans
Long-tail designs imagine Gordon Murray’s 1995 endurance winner as modern machines.
gmsv s1 lmView Photos
Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
A spin-off from Gordon Murray Automotive, Gordon Murray Special Vehicles will focus on small-run and custom designs, unveiling its first two projects at The Quail during Monterey Car Week 2025.
The GMSV Le Mans GTR is limited to just 24 units and features space-age longtail bodywork.
The GMSV S1 LM is a customer special request, and only five examples will be built.
Gordon Murray’s name remains forever married to the famed McLaren F1 he designed, but these days we’ve been hearing it more in reference to his refined take on that car, the T.50. But that’s all Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA). Just one company can’t hold all Mr. Murray’s big ideas, which leaves room for Gordon Murray Special Vehicles (GMSV). GMSV allows Murray to play with one-off designs, special commissions, and history-inspired continuation builds.
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Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
The possibilities are endless, but to start, GMSV revealed two in-process projects at The Quail during 2025 Monterey Car Week. Both cars are Le Mans-inspired and take the high-revving, lightweight format of the T.50 to the next level. The first, GMSV’s “Le Mans GTR,” plays off the extended rear deck of what’s commonly referred to as “longtail” designs. The stretched back allows for better downforce and stability at high speeds, and the look caught the imagination of race fans and car designers.
GMSV Le Mans GTR
The GTR uses the GMA 4.0-liter V-12 engine and manual six-speed from the T.50, but has a completely different body, aiming for high grip and cornering without the controversial rear fan of the T.50 and T.50S. Its massive rear wing and protruding diffuser might be only a fraction less controversial, but at least the owner won’t have to answer questions about how they work. Roof-mounted air intakes will give the GTR a sound to match its racy looks and 12,100-rpm redline.
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Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
GMSV will also offer the GTR as an SV Design model with a stiffer and lighter suspension, wider track, bigger tires, and more cooling for true track action. GMSV consultant Dario Franchitti said that while it’s not accurate to call the Le Mans GTR track-focused, it will have a noticeably different driving personality than the T.50.
The display GTR is still in the modelling stage, but the plan is to build 24 GMSV Le Mans GTR models, and GMSV says they are all sold. You get a cookie if you can guess why GMSV went with 24 as the production run. Hint: How many hours are there in the famous endurance race?
GMSV S1 LM
For the S1 LM, there was no need to find buyers, as the customer came to Murray with a special request for a car that harkens back directly to the modified McLaren F1 GTR that took victory at Le Mans in 1995. It’s got a much more McLaren-y look than the GTR, but it tucks in more at the middle, giving it the coke-bottle shape Murray has always bemoaned as missing from the original F1.
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Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
It looks great on five-spoke wheels, and those should make it through to the final design. Unfortunately, what look like pop-up headlights will most likely get nixed before production.
The S1 LM builds around a central airfoil, roof-mounted intake, split rear wing, and a central four-part exhaust. It uses a 4.3-liter naturally-aspirated V-12, which is a bored-out version of T.50’s engine. “It’s lighter!” said Franchitti. Like its sibling, the S1 LM uses a large wing and a wide rear diffuser to sweep air out from under the body. Just one custom Gordon Murray car wasn’t enough for this customer; they have five road-legal S1 LM models on order.
Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
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Gordon Murray Special Vehicles
All these special projects and sold-out runs bode well for the future of the Gordon Murray Group, said CEO Phillip Lee. “The last car is on the production line for T.50,” he remarked, adding that the T.50S track variant will start production in September, and the T.33 remains on target for the summer of 2026.
In the meantime, Gordon Murray is still drawing cars. “Sometimes we’ll be in a meeting and I’ll think Gordon is listening and then at the end he’ll slide over a piece of paper with something fantastic on it and say, ‘What do you think, should we build this?'”
More on Gordon Murray Automotive
Return to Center: 2025 Gordon Murray T.50
Gordon Murray’s T.33 Has 607-HP V-12 and a Manual
Gordon Murray T.33 Supercar Adds Stunning Spider
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Elana Scherr
Senior Editor, Features
Like a sleeper agent activated late in the game, Elana Scherr didn’t know her calling at a young age. Like many girls, she planned to be a vet-astronaut-artist, and came closest to that last one by attending UCLA art school. She painted images of cars, but did not own one. Elana reluctantly got a driver’s license at age 21 and discovered that she not only loved cars and wanted to drive them, but that other people loved cars and wanted to read about them, which meant somebody had to write about them. Since receiving activation codes, Elana has written for numerous car magazines and websites, covering classics, car culture, technology, motorsports, and new-car reviews. In 2020, she received a Best Feature award from the Motor Press Guild for the C/D story “A Drive through Classic Americana in a Polestar 2.” In 2023, her Car and Driver feature story “In Washington, D.C.’s Secret Carpool Cabal, It’s a Daily Slug Fest” was awarded 1st place in the 16th Annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards by the Los Angeles Press Club.
