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The McMurtry Spéirling Pure made its public debut at Goodwood this month. With fan-powered downforce and a record-breaking acceleration claim, the British-built track car offers a glimpse of where extreme performance is heading.

The ultimate measure of a performance car used to be simple enough. First it was engine size, then horsepower, then lap times. The newest battleground is acceleration and the ability to wring apparently physics-defying performance out of electric power, and few cars illustrate that shift more starkly than the McMurtry Spéirling Pure.

McMurtry revealed the production version at the start of July and gave it a public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed over the weekend of 9 to 12 July, the same hillclimb where the prototype first made its name. It is a British-built electric hyper track car costing £995,000 before local taxes and options, and McMurtry claims it will cover 0-60mph in 1.55 seconds, which would make it the fastest-accelerating production car yet built. The figure is not independently verified and it uses the one-foot rollout common to drag racing, but even allowing for that it sits well clear of rivals such as the Rimac Nevera, which claims 1.74 seconds.

The headline number is not really the point, though. The Spéirling reflects a broader change in how the wealthiest enthusiasts spend their money, moving away from traditional status symbols and towards highly engineered experiences. This is not a car for commuting or weekend drives. It is not even road legal. It is built around a single idea, which is getting a private owner as close as possible to the sensations of professional motorsport.

How McMurtry’s fan downforce works

McMurtry first drew global attention in 2022, when an early Spéirling smashed the outright record at the Goodwood hillclimb. What made that run remarkable was not just the time but the engineering behind it, because the Spéirling ignores the usual hypercar recipe of more power and bigger wings. Instead it uses fan-generated downforce, a technology made famous and then swiftly banned when Brabham ran its BT46B fan car in 1978. Two high-speed fans create a vacuum beneath the car and effectively suck it onto the track.

The advantage is grip that is there from the moment the car moves, even at low speeds where conventional aerodynamics do almost nothing. McMurtry says the production car generates up to 2,000kg of downforce from a standstill and can pull up to 3g under cornering and braking, figures that belong in motorsport rather than on any road car. The result is a machine designed to hand elite racing sensations to drivers who are not professionals. It still demands skill, but the technology is there to make the extraordinary feel attainable.

McMurtry Spéirling Pure price and specs

At £995,000 before taxes, the Spéirling sits in a rarefied bracket where buyers are not cross-shopping conventional sports cars so much as buying access to an experience. For that they get 1,000bhp sent to the rear wheels, a 190mph top speed and a 100kWh battery, wrapped in a single-seat carbon body that McMurtry says is 95 per cent new compared with the prototype.

There are limits, and they are significant. This is a track car, so owners need circuit access, specialist support and the means to transport and maintain it. McMurtry has tried to soften the ownership experience with a factory support programme and track events, and the production car adds more cabin space, easier access and a helmet compartment beneath the rear wing. Charging runs from 20 to 95 per cent in anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes depending on conditions, and for circuits without serious charging infrastructure the company will sell owners a portable power supply. It remains an extreme thing to own, but McMurtry clearly wants it to be usable rather than merely spectacular.

The electric era is producing a new kind of collector car

The Spéirling also points to a change in what the very top of the market values. For decades the ultimate collector car meant heritage, a rare Ferrari or a historic Porsche. Increasingly the most coveted machines are demonstrations of engineering ambition instead. Rimac has shown that electric power can deliver figures once thought impossible, and the McMurtry belongs to the same movement, though it takes a different path. Rather than chase grand touring ability or everyday usability, it strips away everything that does not serve the driver, the machine and the circuit. In a world where performance cars keep getting heavier and more heavily filtered through electronics, that single-mindedness has obvious appeal.

Why the Spéirling is a British engineering story

The Spéirling matters beyond its acceleration. Britain has a long tradition of specialist engineering, from Formula 1 teams to low-volume sports car makers, but the future of that industry rests on firms willing to try genuinely new things rather than polish the past. McMurtry, hand-building the car at its new factory in Wotton-under-Edge in the Cotswolds, is doing exactly that. The company was founded in 2016 by the late Sir David McMurtry, the engineer behind Renishaw, and the Spéirling brings together electric power, motorsport thinking and a very British taste for solving problems in unconventional ways.

Whether it becomes a curiosity or the start of a whole category of extreme electric track cars is impossible to say yet. What it has already done is more interesting, which is to challenge the assumption that an electric car has to feel like a compromise.