McMurtry Automotive, a British company that built a bonkers electric car prototype which has shattered track records everywhere it goes, teased the production version of its Spéirling ‘fan car’, to be unveiled next week.
For the last several years, we’ve seen plenty of development in electric performance vehicles, with crazier horsepower and acceleration numbers, even from previously-unknown brands.
But EVs have gotten so fast that there’s something still holding them back: tires.
Most of the highest-performance EVs on the road are now “traction-limited,” which means they literally could not go any faster if they tried, because tires just can’t keep up.
But it turns out there’s a physics trick that can help with that, and it’s one that McMurtry has deployed on its Speirling “fan car,” which has giant fans underneath to push air out the back and to create a low pressure zone underneath the car. This “sucks” the car to the ground, increasing traction without increasing vehicle weight. (Tesla has patented a similar system, possibly for use in the new Roadster).
This is a concept that actually dates back to the 1970s, where it was deployed so effectively in auto racing that it was almost immediately banned.
McMurtry has been the first to put it into place on a modern electric car, and the results have been startling.
For the last few years, the company has brought the car out to various tracks and race events, and has set literally unfair times at each of them. That’s what 1,000hp on a 1,000kg car can do – especially when it also has 2,000kg of downforce at 0mph due to the suction from the fan car system (which is, in fact, enough to let the car drive upside down).
Its first outing was at Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2022 where it set an all-time record, beating VW’s ID.R, which had in turn beaten a 20-year record from an F1 car.
The video is worth watching, because it honestly looks like the car is using cheat codes. It’s like a slot car, but on a real road.
The car also beat a
But, this has always been a prototype. McMurtry has been teasing a production version of the car, and now we’ve seen the first teaser shot of it, in advance of next week’s reveal.
New teaser shot of the ₤1M, 1,000hp, 100 unit Speirling PURE
McMurtry has been teasing a potential production version of the Speirling since 2023, and it finally started working on that series production this year. It’s finally ready for a full reveal of the production version, which will come next week, but it’s trying to drum up some excitement with a teaser shot in advance.
McMurtry released a short video showing, well, not much at all, which you can see below:
It’s captioned with “a storm is coming,” a reference to the vehicle’s name, Spéirling, which comes from the old Gaelic word for “thunderstorm.” The video is also accompanied by a whooshing sound, the sound of the Speirling rocketing by with its quiet twin electric motors and loud fans.
McMurtry says the production version, which it’s calling the Speirling PURE, will have 95% new components as compared to the prototype versions of the car. And it will be limited to no more than 100 units, at a cool ₤1 million ($1.32M) each.
We’ll learn more about the production version next week at the full unveil, but for now, all we can tell is that it does look quite similar to the prototypes we’ve seen, in that it’s a small single seater with a big wing out back.
It does, though, thankfully come in something a little more exciting than the light silver color we’ve seen around. In fact, McMurtry has a decadent seven color options. (I’d take the yellow or purple… but for a million bucks, we’d imagine you could ask for custom treatment)
If you happen to have a million bucks laying around for a single seater track car, you can head on over to McMurtry’s website to register your interest (and maybe McMurtry can open up a referral system? Do I get a free one if I refer an owner? Pretty please? Along with a couple tubes of Dramamine?)
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