The McMurtry Spéirling reached the top of the Goodwood hillclimb in 39.08 seconds in June 2022, faster than any car in the event’s history and 0.82 seconds quicker than the Volkswagen ID.R that had held the outright mark.
It did so with a trick motorsport had banned twice.
Formula 1 and Can-Am both outlawed the idea within a single season of its appearance in the 1970s. Two fans mounted in the tail pull the air out from under the car, and atmospheric pressure does the rest, pinning it to the tarmac even while it sits still.
Now McMurtry has turned that record-setter into something you can own. The Spéirling Pure, revealed in final production form on July 2, is a single-seat electric track car built in a run of 100, priced at £995,000 before local taxes, roughly $1.3 million at current exchange. First deliveries land later in 2026.
The company describes it as 95 percent new hardware versus the prototype that rewrote the record books. That is a polite way of saying the demonstration car has grown up.
What has not changed is the idea underneath it. This is a fan car, a design so effective that motorsport banned it twice before most of today’s drivers were born. McMurtry revived it in the one place no rival team can lobby it out of existence: a road you buy your own way onto.
Key Takeaways
- The Spéirling Pure is a production fan car, limited to 100 units at £995,000 (about $1.3 million) before taxes, with first deliveries later in 2026 from a new factory in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire.
- Two fans generate up to 2,000 kg (about 4,400 lb) of downforce, available from 0 mph. Wings need speed to work; suction does not, so this car corners and brakes at 3g even at low speed.
- Roughly 1,000 bhp drives the rear wheels from twin motors and a 100 kWh battery, good for 0-60 mph in 1.55 seconds and a 190 mph top speed.
- The prototype set the outright Goodwood hillclimb record at 39.08 seconds in 2022 and later beat a Formula 1 car’s Top Gear lap that had stood for 21 years.
- The fan-car concept was banned from F1 in 1978 and Can-Am in 1970. McMurtry is the first fan car in sanctioned competition since the Brabham BT46B.
- Founder Sir David McMurtry, the metrology pioneer behind Renishaw, died in December 2024, the year before his late-life project reached production.
- Short track range: a single run lasts 40 to 50 km, roughly 25 to 31 miles. This is a time-attack weapon, not an endurance car.
What a Fan Car Actually Does
Downforce is the reason a race car can corner far harder than physics seems to allow, and almost every one earns it with wings and a shaped floor that trade speed for grip. The faster the car goes, the more air flows over those surfaces, and the more firmly it presses into the road.
Stop moving and the effect vanishes. A parked Formula 1 car has no more grip than a parked hatchback.
A fan car breaks that bargain. Instead of waiting for airflow, it uses fans to physically evacuate the air trapped between the floor and the ground, sealing the gap with a skirt around the underbody. Remove enough air and the pressure above the car greatly exceeds the pressure below it, so the atmosphere itself clamps the car down.
McMurtry calls the system Downforce-on-Demand. It delivers up to 2,000 kg of the stuff, more than the car’s own weight, the instant the driver asks for it.
That is why the numbers around this car read strangely. Cornering and braking at 3g normally requires serious speed to build the aerodynamic load. The Spéirling pulls those figures at low speed too, because its grip does not depend on how fast it is going.
Two fans spinning up to 23,000 rpm handle the suction. McMurtry runs a pair for redundancy, so the car keeps its footing even in a spin, when a conventional aero car would be sliding on nothing.
The Specifications
The production car makes about 1,000 bhp at the rear wheels from twin electric motors McMurtry calls Helix, fed by a 100 kWh lithium-ion battery. That capacity nearly doubles the 60 kWh pack in the record prototype.
It needs the extra room. The Pure is longer, wider, and taller than the demonstrator, riding a 2,200 mm wheelbase, with a curb weight up around 1,350 kg. For a sense of scale, that is roughly 2,980 pounds in a car shorter than a Mazda MX-5.
| Specification | McMurtry Spéirling Pure |
|---|---|
| Layout | Single-seat, carbon-fiber monocoque, rear-wheel drive |
| Power | ~1,000 bhp (twin Helix motors) |
| Battery | 100 kWh lithium-ion (Molicel 21700 cells) |
| 0-60 mph | 1.55 seconds |
| Top speed | 190 mph |
| Downforce | Up to 2,000 kg (~4,400 lb), available from 0 mph |
| Cornering / braking | 3g / 3g |
| Fan system | Two fans, up to 23,000 rpm, dual for redundancy |
| Regeneration | Up to 200 kW |
| Charge time | 20 to 60 min, 20 to 95 percent |
| Track run | 40 to 50 km (25 to 31 miles) at LMP2 pace |
| Curb weight | ~1,350 kg (~2,980 lb) |
| Brakes | 390 mm carbon-ceramic, Brembo six-piston calipers |
| Price | £995,000 (~$1.3 million) before taxes |
| Production | 100 units, deliveries from late 2026 |
The 1.55-second sprint to 60 mph is measured with a one-foot rollout, and the 190 mph ceiling matters mainly as proof the car is not aero-limited to a crawl.
Neither figure is really the point.
What the specification sheet is trying to tell you is that a driver can generate grip on command, at any speed, without building up to it. Every other change from prototype to production, the hydraulic steering with Formula 1-style valving, the front-mounted cooling, the taller ride height, the cockpit sized to fit someone 6 feet 7 inches tall, exists to make that capability usable by a customer rather than a professional demonstrator.
The Record That Made It Famous
McMurtry did not build its reputation on a spec sheet. It built it on a hill in West Sussex. On June 26, 2022, former Formula 1 driver Max Chilton launched the Spéirling prototype up Goodwood’s 1.16-mile hillclimb and stopped the clock at 39.08 seconds, the outright fastest run in the Festival of Speed’s history. The mark beat the official Sunday shootout record of 41.6 seconds, set by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren F1 car, and edged past the unofficial 39.9-second benchmark that Romain Dumas had established in the Volkswagen ID.R. A packed Sunday crowd watched a silent electric single-seater humble two generations of purpose-built racing machinery.
Three years later the car went after a different benchmark. Piloted by the Stig, the Spéirling lapped the Top Gear test track at Dunsfold in 55.9 seconds, 3.1 seconds faster than the 2004 Renault R24 Formula 1 car that had held the record for roughly two decades. The same driver had needed 1 minute 9.6 seconds to get an Aston Martin Valkyrie around the same circuit.
The fan car was nearly 14 seconds quicker.
McMurtry has also shown the prototype driving upside down at a standstill, its suction exceeding the car’s weight. Treat that one as a manufacturer demonstration rather than a timed achievement, but the physics is honest: if the fans can pull harder than gravity, the ceiling works as well as the floor.
Motorsport Banned This Idea Twice
The fan car is not a McMurtry invention. It is a resurrection. The concept surfaced first in American road racing with the Chaparral 2J of 1970, the work of Jim Hall and Hap Sharp.
Two rear fans, driven by a separate two-stroke snowmobile engine, sucked air from beneath the car through Lexan skirts and produced downforce that did not care how fast the car was traveling. It ran a single Can-Am season before the SCCA banned it, siding with rivals who argued the fans amounted to movable aerodynamic devices.
Formula 1 got its turn eight years later. Gordon Murray’s Brabham BT46B arrived at the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix with a large rear fan that Murray defended as a cooling device, its downforce a convenient side effect. Niki Lauda won the race commandingly, in what remains the design’s only World Championship start. Rival teams, led by Colin Chapman’s Lotus operation, pressured Bernie Ecclestone, and the car was quietly retired after its single victory.
Both times, a rulebook killed the fan car while it was winning. Neither ban was a verdict on the physics.
That history is what makes the Spéirling more than a rich person’s toy. McMurtry calls it the first fan car to run in sanctioned competition since 1978, and the claim holds up because hillclimb timed runs offer exactly the venue the concept was denied. There is no rival paddock at a private time-attack session to vote the fans out. The idea finally gets to exist.
The Man Behind It
McMurtry Automotive is not a startup chasing a trend. It began in 2016 in the Cotswolds as the late-life project of Sir David McMurtry, an engineer who had already changed one industry before he turned his attention to cars.
In 1973 he co-founded Renishaw to commercialize the 3D touch-trigger probe he had invented to solve a measurement problem on the Rolls-Royce Olympus engines that powered Concorde. He held more than 200 patents, earned a knighthood in 2001, and built a company valued in the billions.
He was 76 when he started McMurtry.
He recruited Thomas Yates, a powertrain engineer out of the Mercedes Formula 1 program, and set the team loose on the fan-car problem that motorsport had abandoned. Sir David died on December 9, 2024, the year before the production Spéirling was finished. The company’s own materials now refer to him as the late Sir David McMurtry.
A billionaire who spent his career making things measurable to the micron closed it out by building the fastest thing he could, and did not quite live to see it delivered.
Know what you are buying. A single charge supports 40 to 50 km of hard track driving, roughly 25 to 31 miles, before the battery needs 20 to 60 minutes to recover. The Spéirling Pure is a sprint and time-attack instrument, sharpened for record runs and short sessions, not a car you point down a canyon for an afternoon. McMurtry designed it that way on purpose, and states the limit plainly rather than burying it.
Who It Is For
McMurtry positions the Pure as an accessible taste of Formula 1-grade performance, a car engineered so an amateur can access grip that used to demand a professional. It is eligible for outlets like the GT1 Sports Club, Global Time Attack in the United States, and Time Attack Masters in Europe, which frames the buyer clearly enough. This is a collector-grade track weapon for someone who wants to chase hillclimb and lap records without a factory contract, not a wheel-to-wheel race car and certainly not a road car.
The company will display the production version at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed from July 9 to 12, with its formal public debut at The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, near Monterey on August 14. Anyone doing the math on 100 units at a million pounds each understands the business case. McMurtry proved the technology on the clock, and now it sells the proof.
Bottom Line
The Spéirling Pure takes an idea that Formula 1 and Can-Am both banned for working too well and puts it in the hands of 100 buyers willing to spend a million pounds. It generates 2,000 kg of downforce from a standstill, sprints to 60 in 1.55 seconds, and holds records that embarrassed genuine Formula 1 machinery. Its track run lasts only the low tens of miles, a ceiling McMurtry names openly. As a monument to what a metrology billionaire built at the end of his life, and as proof that the fan car was killed by rulebooks rather than physics, it is hard to beat. As a thing to actually drive, it asks you to accept that the fun arrives in short, violent bursts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the McMurtry Spéirling Pure?
The Spéirling Pure is a single-seat electric track car built by McMurtry Automotive in the United Kingdom. It uses two fans to generate aerodynamic downforce that is available even at a standstill, a design known as a fan car. McMurtry revealed the production version on July 2, 2026.
How much does the McMurtry Spéirling Pure cost?
The Spéirling Pure is priced at £995,000, roughly $1.3 million at current exchange rates, before local taxes, shipping, and options. McMurtry will build 100 units, with first deliveries expected later in 2026.
How does a fan car work?
A fan car uses fans to pull air out from under the vehicle, sealing the underbody with a skirt. Removing that air makes the pressure above the car exceed the pressure below it, so the atmosphere presses the car into the road. Unlike wings, which need airflow, this suction works from zero speed, so the car can corner and brake hard even when moving slowly.
How much downforce does the McMurtry Spéirling make?
McMurtry quotes up to 2,000 kg, about 4,400 pounds, of downforce, more than the car weighs. Critically, that figure is available from 0 mph because it comes from fan suction rather than airflow over wings.
How fast is the McMurtry Spéirling Pure?
The production car reaches 60 mph in 1.55 seconds and tops out at 190 mph. It also sustains 3g in cornering and braking, and it can do so at low speed thanks to its fan-generated grip.
Did the McMurtry Spéirling set the Goodwood record?
Yes. Driven by Max Chilton, the Spéirling prototype climbed the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb in 39.08 seconds on June 26, 2022, the outright fastest run in the event’s history. It beat the previous unofficial record, held by the Volkswagen ID.R, by 0.82 seconds.
Is the McMurtry Spéirling faster than a Formula 1 car?
On specific tracks, yes. It set the outright Goodwood hillclimb record ahead of a McLaren F1 car, and it lapped the Top Gear test track 3.1 seconds faster than a 2004 Renault R24 Formula 1 car. It does not race in Formula 1, so the comparison is limited to those record contexts.
What was the first fan car?
The Chaparral 2J, which ran in the 1970 Can-Am series, was the first fan car, using two rear fans to suck air from under the body. The Brabham BT46B followed in Formula 1 in 1978, winning the Swedish Grand Prix with Niki Lauda before being withdrawn. Both were effectively banned. McMurtry calls the Spéirling the first fan car in sanctioned competition since 1978.
How long can you drive the McMurtry Spéirling on track?
A single charge supports roughly 40 to 50 km, about 25 to 31 miles, of hard track driving at LMP2 pace. Recharging from 20 to 95 percent takes 20 to 60 minutes depending on conditions. It is built for short, intense sessions rather than long stints.
Who founded McMurtry Automotive?
McMurtry Automotive was founded in 2016 by Sir David McMurtry, the engineer who co-founded metrology company Renishaw in 1973. He started the car venture at age 76 and died in December 2024, before the production Spéirling was completed.
Michael Kahn
Michael Kahn is the writer, photographer, and publisher behind The Weekly Driver. He cares about how cars drive and what they're like to own. He covers automobile industry news, car shows and events, and new car reviews. The reviews come from behind the wheel: day trips that favor back routes, treating a good meal as half the reason to go. He directs and produces the visual media, matching each car to a setting and mood that fit it. When he's not reviewing new cars, Michael races paddleboards, camels, and ostriches, along with the occasional exotic car on the racetrack, and has driven in every state and country visited.
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