Earlier this year, during Monterey Car Week, Gordon Murray Automotive launched a new Special Vehicles division. With that launch came two highly limited supercars: The Le Mans GTR and the S1 LM. While both cars are based on GMA’s T.50 road car, the S1 LM wears bodywork very clearly resembling McLaren’s F1 GTR, the car that famously won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1995.
The S1 LM’s reveal was met with overly positive press coverage. I absolutely loved it when I laid eyes on the design buck during a preview event in Monterey a few months back. While it doesn’t exactly match up with the F1 GTR, there are elements, like the roof scoop, the door shape, and the slatted rear end, that are very obvious callbacks to the original ’90s race car. In all, I’d say it’s a pleasantly faithful recreation with a handful of welcome modern touches.
The designer of the original McLaren F1 GTR seems to think differently. Peter Stevens, the man responsible for penning the F1’s and the F1 GTR’s exterior, took to Instagram on Wednesday to share his disdain for the S1 LM’s looks, describing the car as “clearly nothing like an F1.” From the post:
It appeared to have been produced on the keyboard of a CAD program by someone wearing boxing gloves. What loos [sic] something like a couple of black planks of wood sspended on skinny little aluminium plates is possibly meant to represent a rear wing. This and a huge clunky looking rear lower diffuser, do not in any way represent the character of a proper McLaren F1 GTR. I would never produce a front air intake as crude and featureless as this S1-LM, nor with such gapping side air intakes.
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These criticisms aren’t directed at Gordon Murray himself—Stevens seems to retain great respect for Murray and what he’s been able to accomplish throughout his career, judging by this post. Nor are they directed at Kevin Richards, chief creative officer for GMA. That’s because neither of these people designed the car. Instead, it was an outsider brought in by the buyer who commissioned the S1 LM. This CarBuzz interview with CEO Phil Lee tells the full story:
While company Chief Creative Officer Kevin Richards penned the Le Mans GTR, a little-known designer named Florian Flatau was the one behind the S1 LM. That’s no slight against Richards, however. “He’s worked with Gordon for 30-plus years,” Lee said. “He knows the way [Gordon] thinks, and they work hand in glove to design the cars.” But when the commissioner of the F1 LM put forth an exterior stylist of their own, GMSV (and more importantly, Murray himself) felt as though the company could successfully work with an outsider on the project. According to Lee, Murray guided Flatau, but gave him leeway nevertheless – “He doesn’t say no, but he tries to coach through the process.”
Stevens quotes the above text in another Instagram post, describing the entire ordeal as “very bizarre.” He doesn’t hold any ill will towards Flatau, though. “Flatau actually turns out to be a decent guy,” Stevens told me via Instagram DM. “He has fairly recently gone freelance and didn’t have much of an option in having to grab the project.” Flatau did not immediately respond when I reached out for comment.
Source: Gordon Murray Automotive
“I do think it was [Gordon Murray Design’s] job to suggest something for the future rather than from the past,” Stevens told me, suggesting the project should not have been a recreation of the F1 GTR, but something totally new. “Or buy him an F1 and update the lighting, brakes, stiffness of the rear of the monocoque, gearbox, and sound system, perhaps even ventilation system,” he added, suggesting GMA should bring an F1 up to modern standards rather than build an entirely new car.
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In that same Instagram post, he theorizes why GMA would build such a car in the first place. Here’s where things get confusing:
I can’t help feeling that making a huge design and tooling investment in an homage is a strange idea. All projects that I know of have a business plan, and that is to make money, not celebrate a more that thirty-year-old project. Why would an automotive company choose to make a tribute to another company’s product? Well, McLaren Automotive has been acquired by CYVN Holdings – an Abu Dhabi-based investment company – which has also taken a non-controlling stake in McLaren Racing. McLaren Automotive is soon to merge with CYVN’s British start-up brand ‘Forseven’, which has been, over the last three years, planning to launch a product “into the luxury car market”. In that time it had a bit of help from Gordon Murray Technologies, which (of course) CYVN owns as well.
Ok, let’s break this down. It’s true that CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi-based investment company, owns a controlling stake in both McLaren and Gordon Murray Technologies. It’s also true that McLaren is merging with Forseven, a British luxury start-up founded last year that’s being bankrolled by CYVN. What any of this has to do with GMA building a tribute car to the GTR, I’m not sure. Companies make retro tributes to old models all the time. Many smaller restomodding companies build cars that resemble vehicles they had no part in designing—think cars like the Kimera EVO37, a mid-engine, twin-charged sports car meant to be a modern recreation of the Lancia 037. Why’s it any different with the S1 LM?
Source: Kimera Automobili
When I asked Stevens about this, he simply said, “With both companies loosing [sic] millions I guess it is just expedience.” He didn’t respond when I asked for further clarification. Financials for GMA are only available up until the end of 2023, where GMA declared a loss of £14,376,506 (around $11.3 million) in the 16-month period prior to filing. But it’s worth noting that it only started deliveries of its first car, the T.50, towards the end of that 16-month timeframe.
It’s tough to turn a profit as a new car company, even when you’re making central-seat, V12-powered supercars. The Five S1 LMs, which are all being bought by the same person, are rumored to cost $10 million each, meaning a nice infusion of cash for GMA. I suspect Stevens is just a bit miffed GMA is leaning on his past design to cash in on this commission rather than designing something new.
While I understand Stevens’ frustration, it’s tough to fault GMA. The whole company is held up by Gordon Murray’s legendary status as the creator of the original F1. So if any brand is going to build a proper homage, it’s this one. If I had $50 million to blow on a custom car, I’d probably order up something very similar to the S1 LM. And I probably wouldn’t trust any other company to do it.
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I’m of two minds about this. Of course the original designer has the right to feel however he wants to feel about anything based on his work, especially when they don’t consult him about it, but he lost me here:
“I can’t help feeling that making a huge design and tooling investment in an homage is a strange idea. All projects that I know of have a business plan, and that is to make money, not celebrate a more that thirty-year-old project. Why would an automotive company choose to make a tribute to another company’s product?”
This falls flat on its face with the slightest amount of examination. Off the top of my head I can name Ruf and Caterham, Lucra, Eagle, you mentioned Kimera and there’s probably a lot of other companies making a good living making new versions of older cars! That’s such an out-of-touch take.
Does he even know about the DDR Grullon? Nobody tell him about the DDR Grullon!
I see exactly where this guy is coming from.
It’s no different from the folks at Herman Miller disclaiming cheap imported knockoffs of Eames Chairs, or Bentley design chief Luc Donckerwolke, designer of the Flying Spur, making similar posts and comments about the folks at Ford when they introduced their 2016 Lincoln Continental concept sedan, or BMW filing suit against Shuanghuan for copyright infringement against their X5 clone, and BYD for use of the M6 moniker.
Design work and building brand identity is not easy – so when someone comes along and does a knock-off of your work – its not just disrespectful. It’s theft.
Womp womp. Seems someone is butt-hurt his ex moved on and married someone else lol
Haters – as the youths say – gonna hate.
Dude seems jealous or something. Maybe just petty, I don’t know, but it’s not a good look. Also, while I am a designer, I’m not an automotive designer, so I can’t really speak with authority on this, but I think the S1 looks amazing. I actually prefer it to the F1.
I think that the olds say that.
They very well may say that. I’m too old to understand the youths, but I’m also too young to understand the olds. It’s quite the conundrum.
Why buy five ?
It’s likely an interaction of financial and business interests
GMA probably needed to sell at least 5 cars to justify the program, so the guy who wanted one bought all of them to guarantee the business case for GMA
Now the buyer has the bragging rights, and if he wants to some cash, there’s 4 others he could sell, probably for more than what he paid
Yes, this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the order come from someone in Saudi Arabia or UAE and they’re likely going to make a profit on the transaction.
I think so too but not just because of a simple game of buying low and selling high. See my reply above. It feels its more complicated.
How much could a banana possibly cost? $10?
Hmmm… but $10m is a lot for a second hand car 😉
More serious ; these cars are super unique, maybe a bit too unique, especially since they’re from a non-famous manufacturer, it’s not a Ferrari or a Lambo – and trust me – most buyers are pretty informed but they aren’t that much of a petrolhead like us.
Reading that the owner of both McLaren and GMA is one and the same, I almost wonder if it is a financial trick, for taxes, for inflating value of GMA (look ma, $50m sales!) or something like that.
If you have $10m spare, I’m sure you can let anyone build a super unique car for you, so why bother buying one of which there are now 5 …
I don’t buy it. Pun intended. 🙂
Anyone could build a unique car for $10m but there’s a certain amount of bragging rights and exclusivity to having Gordon Murray build you a super unique car for $10m
The $50 million price tag for all 5 cars isn’t so bad when you consider that a single Rolls Royce Boattail costs $28 million
Gotta remember: People making these kinds of purchases are thinking of these purchase decisions in terms of “Do I get this, commission a new yacht or get a new helicopter,” not “It’s an expensive car”
People with money, who work with money, are often very aware of how much things cost and its value. It’s the people who earn their money in other fields, think sporters, singers, actors, who think that $10m in the bank is enough for them to live a lavish lifestyle for the next 50 years. They often go broke and/or get scammed. Think boxer Mayweather with his Maybach G650 issue.
The fact someone has $10m or $100m or $1b, made doing business, often means they’re extremely smart at doing deals. Not Trump smart, but ‘stingy’ smart. So when they go shop at a car dealer, they won’t pay a premium. They won’t pay MSRP or sticker price. They will pay less. They might treat the salesguy with something, but such a buyer will keep that main discount in their pocket.
If you’re really filthy rich, think Musk, Gates, Bezos, then sure probably some very expensive purchases will be made, but again, they aren’t going to overpay if not necessary. If you’re planning to spend $50 MILLION USD on 5 cars then I assume there is some solid plan behind this. As other people wrote ; maybe to sell to other people, what I think ; something with the ownership, the shares/stock, revenue. There just isn’t a solid reason to buy 5 of the same cars, the only 5 cars, unless you’re mad and want to have one in red, blue, black, white and pink. That would be an exception IMHO.
Bezos superyacht (Koru, 417 foot) is supposed to cost $500 MILLION. Now that is a lot of money. But it is a 417 foot yacht. It is a floating palace, one of its kind. Spending 10% of that on 5 cars seems to be a very strange decision. The yacht will last a long time, (super)cars like this seem to get eclipsed almost every 5 years by either tech or new insights. A 1500 horsepowered EV? For less than $100k USD? Yes no problem – get a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra and off you go. Now if you then drive next to one on a track, dragstrip or just on the highway and that car just DEMOLISHES your attempt to keep up with it, then I’d be very very disappointed.
On the sea however there aren’t many 417 foot yachts which can compare to yours, definitely not for 1% of the price ($100k vs $10m).
I imagine the person who bought the cars is an Emirati. Unlimited funny money
Think so too. Get oil from ground. Put in ship. Send overseas. Get a lot of money. Sit on camel. Buy cars. Like that.
well, f..k it then! he convinced me! I am returning mine
This sounds like a bunch of petty 1st world problems to me.
That sounds like an understatement to me.
He sounds like he has no idea what this whole thing even is and just wanted to bitch on social media for attention.
It’s already been mentioned, but this is not a new model in their lineup. It’s a series of 5 one-off cars all ordered by one person. GMA is basically just supplying the mechanical underpinnings and building the things. I’m sure they offer advice, but the design is really not their call. I’m sure this guy would design whatever someone wanted if they backed up a dump truck full of money to his house.
Also lmao at the suggestion that you can just go out and buy an F1 and easily restomod it. You could probably build 3 of these cars for what you’d pay for an F1, and that’s before you even do anything to it.
Also for small runs like this tooling isn’t such a huge investment because you can make foam molds for the carbon fiber straight from the data.
That’s why it’s doubly confusing why he’s acting like this. The guy has to know how this whole process works.
You would think so but maybe he’s a bit old school and out of touch.
Probably he didn’t get really rich from the F1 and doesn’t like someone making money of a ‘copy’ of his original design. I mean if some obscure chinese company makes a semi copy of a Taycan then we can all laugh about that, because the designers of the Taycan got paid well and the copy is just a ‘cheap’ chinese car, not something which sells for $10m/each.
Nobody goes into car design to get rich – when the original F1 was done he would have got paid like any other job. And it’s a bit rich him complaining seeing as he made his name redoing the Lotus Esprit in 1987.
Designing a facelift of an existing older model for it’s original manufacturer is a very different thing than designing a knockoff for someone completely different.
I think that’s getting into semantics. He’s in his right to not like it, and to criticize it publically but this comes across as bad faith.
$10m buys a lot of time and resources imho. Even $1m would go far. Then add $9m and you can almost develop an engine from scratch for that money. I say almost. But if you go to AMG or BMW M or Ferrari, I’m sure they don’t mind to make a bespoke custom Ferrari V12 or whatever you want, but based on a block they have already and with other parts they have already – you just can choose which parts and how you want to tune it. You want something high revving, so heavily turbod, one turbo, two turbos, with some electric parts sprinkled in between – for $1, 2, or 3m USD, just for the engine, a lot is possible.
This all reminds me of how Thomas Wolfe got in an argument with Norman Mailer, John Updike and John Irving about their use of character study, and they shot back that his latest book at the time was not literature.
My guess is it’s all about credit and money. Mostly money.
Yeah he sounds petty and bitter. That car looks amazing, and being able to modernize it to look good in 2025 is pretty amazing. Most re-modernized “visions” you see look awful and also not feasible for today’s safety standards.
Rich people problems make first world problems seem critical.
Same with the reimaged Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4 that riled some designers and purists…
I think the S1 LM actually looks pretty good. Stevens sounds rather pompous and probably is upset that he wasn’t asked to do the design.
Steven’s sounds like a catty bitch while writing walls of error-filled text under IG posts. Time comes for us all.
There was a bit of angry boomer energy too in that swipe about emoji.
This response is very strange and 13 year old-keyboard warrior like. A lot of bitterness.
The suggestion that he would rather take an original F1 and “update” some aspects to achieve a similar result strikes me as even more strange. That would be way more sacrilegious.
This new S1 is perfect, sorry Peter.
What if it ends up looking like a Morgan Aero 8 after they come up with a headlight design?
Exactly like a Lancia! Why, putting them side to side I don’t even think I could tell them apart!
Big surprise the guy who designed the original doesn’t like a modern interpretation by someone else, which is fine and understandable, but I don’t get the tone of the rest. The “why” is easy and he even acknowledged it: money. Someone came in with a dump truck of money to a guy who builds cars and needs money and said, “I want to build an interpretation of the F1 using what you’re building now.” Murray took the offer as pretty much anyone would. This was a customer requested and funded one-off (well, 5-off or whatever the exact number was), there’s no mystery here, so why he’s acting like he can’t figure it out is what I don’t get. I’d be more flattered that someone wanted an imitation and proud to have designed something so top tier in the first place. Maybe he’s offended that he wasn’t asked to do it?
Anyway, this is still far, far better than the recent reinterpretation of the Countach, though Gandini was a lot more subtle and polite when presented with that monstrosity.
Well that answers my question of whether McLaren’s lawyers will be contacting GMA regarding copyright infringement. Effectively they are the same company.
Someone should tell him that if doesn’t like it then he needs to blame himself, because as far as tributes go… it’s pretty much identical, and dare I say… (better)
“It appeared to have been produced on the keyboard of a CAD program by someone wearing boxing gloves.”
Probably answers his emails the same way.
Strikes me as particularly sour grapes as Stevens of all people would know better.
I should clarify that I was making a Homestar Runner joke, not a comment on Stevens’ remark.
I wondered if this guy was a HSR fan. He’s probably a little old, but I don’t know of any other boxing glove-wearing person who types on a keyboard other than good ole Strong Bad.
Does he also use boxing gloves while using CAD software?
I doubt Stevens knows one end of Alias from the other, but he will have worked with people who do.
This new venture into the car design business will certainly lead to tens of dollars flooding into the Strongbadia economy.
BALEETED
Strongbad saying “Deleted” has been the text tone for one of my closest friends for years now. For a while his ring tone was Strongbads techno song.
Everyone will be driving a Limozeen soon with Trogdor plates.
Kids and old people
NOT ALLOWED
….without a bucket of fried chicken
FOR MEEEEEEE!
My question about the car is: can it play the theme from Night Court (starring Richard Moll)?
The number of random typos and rambling paragraph-less walls of text were hard to read.
I guess his design skills far outweigh his ability to write a coherent Instagram post.
I’m sure he used the latest in CAD technology from EdgarWare. Probably has consumate v’s all over it.
The E-Mails, the E-Mails, what what the E-Mails
“The Five S1 LMs, which are all being bought by the same person”
As if we needed any more evidence that the ultra wealthy are bizarre freaks. “Oh I simply can’t just have ONE 10 million dollar boutique hyper car, I must have ALL OF THEM! NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE ONE BECAUSE I’M AN EXTRA SPECIAL BOY WHO DESERVES ALL OF THE TOYS!”
My solution for this is cheap and simple but is considered a bit of a faux pas….so maybe we could just, I don’t know, tax these ghouls?
But if we tax him, he might only be able to afford three of them! The horror!
While I agree with the general sentiment, from what I’ve read, this was the customer’s request and funding, not some GMA product that was snapped up by one wendigo hoarder, so this is no different than any other bespoke request from any number of other makers or coachbuilders of the past (of course, no market of this magnitude existed back then—even a Bugatti Royale would be under a $1M in today’s money) except he had more than one made which probably makes some sense as it’s much cheaper per unit to build 5 than 1 and I would guess the molds were good for a short run, maximizing their use. Very Sultan of Brunei and I hope the money isn’t as bloody, but accepting a bespoke request for a . . . 8-figure(!) car as something at all reasonable, it then makes sense to build more than one. I wonder if he couldn’t even sell 3 or 4 of them and make his money back for the project.
The money might not be quite as bloody as the Sultan of Brunei’s, but there’s no moral way to make the sort of money that lets you buy five one-off supercars. There are no ethical billionaires.
Your solution is the only one they actually understand.
Just buying some parts cars ahead of time.
In my garage full of mountain bikes is a 1999 Orange MsIsle, all tricked out with shiny bits from Hope. Next to it is another one just like it in a different colour. Next to that is a third one with some Pace parts.
The frames were all less than £100, and I’ve built them up f mostly from cheap parts I’ve had to tidy up.
But if I was rich I might just have three or more nearly identical things as spares just because the cost is less than the grief of trying to get a replacement made later. Or, maybe, one parked in each house.
This seems like perfectly normal obsessive behaviour to me. Although if I were rich enough to do it with boutique supercars I’d probably donate a new wing to my local hospital first, just so I felt less guilty.
Your last paragraph is what gives it away. Spending $50mil on 5 cars is not anywhere close to normal behavior, even allowing that some people are eccentric collectors.
Any normal person would feel at least some kind of guilt over what a ridiculous sum of money that is to blow on toys. I’d consider giving an “eccentric collector” pass at 5 $100k cars, but $50million?
We don’t know that $50 million car guy didn’t already build a couple of hospitals and house 10,000 homeless before deciding to buy the entire production run of…
No, you’re right. Almost certainly just some super rich arsehole. I couldn’t even finish typing out a defence. The good you could do with $10,000,000 can’t ever be outweighed by “I also wanted a blue one” or whatever the justification is.
It’s a minor point perhaps, but as I recall the Koenigsegg Edition program was commissioned by one guy. The intent was never that he would personally take delivery of the lot, just that he was responsible for finding buyers for all six of them. I don’t recall or know whether he came out ahead on the deal.
Ear to the ground with people in the know, it’s rumored to be a similar arrangement here. Whether it comes to fruition, we will see.
Interesting write up, thanks. Small point, GBP 14.3m would amount to about USD 19.2m.