From paddock dream to driveway: the first T.50s Niki Lauda is heading up the Hill

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Gordon Murray Automotive is bringing the first customer T.50s Niki Lauda to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. This is no longer a test prototype but chassis No. 1 of the 25-car track-only run — the moment a loud engineering idea finally becomes a car owned by a real customer.

The car will tackle Goodwood’s famous hillclimb in a livery that nods to Gordon Murray’s first Formula 1 victory: the 1974 South African Grand Prix at Kyalami, with the Brabham BT44 and Carlos Reutemann. The white body, South African flag motif and black number 7 aren’t decorative nostalgia — they tie each T.50s to a specific chapter of Murray’s racing biography.

The T.50s engineering brief reads almost defiantly for 2026. The naturally aspirated Cosworth V12 spins to 12,100 rpm and produces 772 hp at 11,500 rpm, the car weighs under 900 kg, and downforce peaks at 1,200 kg. The gearbox is a six-speed Xtrac with paddle shift, and both the body and aerodynamics are deeply reworked compared with the road-going T.50. GMA itself stresses the point: this isn’t a version of the standard supercar, it’s a track machine with hundreds of changed parts.

The price — £3.1 million, roughly $4.16 million — is before taxes, personalisation and storage. For an ordinary buyer it’s a different world, but the neighbours are interesting: Ferrari FXX-K Evo, Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro and McLaren Solus GT all play in the same closed track-day zone. The T.50s stands out not by hybrid horsepower, but by lightness, a central driving position, the Murray fan and an almost race-bred V12 without turbos.

At Goodwood, GMA will also show the T.33 Spider VP12, Le Mans GTR XP1 and S1 LM. But the headline soundtrack will belong to the T.50s: cars like this no longer feel like the future of the hypercar, they feel like the last luxury of petrol engineering.

When a machine costing £3.1 million isn’t road-legal, it has one job — to become an event every time the engine pushes past 10,000 rpm.