“Greatest of all time” carries weight. Serious words for serious conversations where you just can’t help but bow in the presence of a true phenomenon. Rarified air, anyone or anything under consideration for the title operates on another level, with a gravitational pull that’s undeniable. Exactly one build slot for the greatest hypercar of all time is up for grabs, and you can bet your bottom dollar that billionaires will be acting like animals to secure it.
Ask any car enthusiast what the greatest car of the ’90s is, and they’ll probably tell you it’s the McLaren F1. An ultra-obsessive supercar with three-abreast seating from the mind of Formula 1 engineer Gordon Murray, it completely rewrote the rulebook of what a supercar could be. We’re talking about a series production car top speed record that stood for more than a decade, and required the might of 16 cylinders and four turbochargers to topple. We’re also talking overall victory at Le Mans, a carbon chassis, the weight of a Subaru BRZ, and 618 horsepower. Only 106 were made, and each is now worth eight figures.
Nearly thirty years later, Gordon Murray and his namesake company, Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA), did it again. The GMA T.50 combined all the learnings of the F1 and all of the technological advancements of the past 30 years to create something arguably even more special. We’re talking a dry weight 143 kilograms lighter than the F1, a more effective fan system, a four-liter Cosworth V12 revving to 11,500 RPM, and a proper manual transmission. It’s a tiny, delicate-looking thing, but it howls a wail that’s permanently etched into my memory.
However, even the T.50 came with lessons and constraints. Sure, it costs more than $3.1 million, but what if Sir Gordon Murray took everything learned from the T.50, stripped away the cost cap, and draped it all in coachwork reminiscent of the iconic McLaren F1? Thankfully, we don’t have to imagine. The GMSV S1 LM is real, and on paper, it’s the greatest hypercar of all time.
The V12 engine has been punched out to 4.3 liters and now revs to 12,000 rpm, the suspension geometry is new, the shifter’s supposedly even more precise than on a T.50, and even the carbon fiber structure has been heavily revised. At the same time, the homage-paying styling adds something the T.50 doesn’t always have at first glance: The want factor. It’s no surprise that the S1 LM broke the internet when it was unveiled at Monterey Car Week, but with all five commissioned by the same person, we expected this hypercar to be conceptually similar to a one-off.
As it turns out, it’s not quite that limited. The allocation for chassis number one is going up for auction at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, and whoever places the winning bid will be able to spec their S1 LM out to their liking. Might I suggest “Ueno Clinic” in giant lettering down each side? While that will require some licensing fees, the winning bidder could probably afford it. RM Sotheby’s expects the S1 LM to fetch at least $20 million, which is simultaneously an absurd figure and surprisingly good value.
After all, the Rolls-Royce Boat Tail cost around $30 million per example, and it was basically just a drop-top Phantom, not a boundary-pushing hypercar. Plus, $20 million is about what McLaren F1 chassis number 029 sold for back in 2021, so when you factor in inflation, the S1 LM isn’t exactly milking it. With just one example up for general sale right now, I suspect $20 million is the floor. Will billionaires be able to behave themselves at the amfAR Benefit Gala on Nov. 21? Hopefully, but don’t count on it. What would you do to own the greatest of all time?
Top graphic image: RM Sotheby’s
I’m much more inclined to agree with Peter Stevens’s take. This thing has a bizarre amalgamation of nearly line-for-line copy/paste of F1 and juvenile interpretations of “hypercar”.
There is an interesting irony that billionaires propped up by stock valuations based on delusions about a great technoutopia future, and their ability to capture it, want nothing more than a 1990s car with some minor improvements and still stick.
Yet special needs financially illiterate retail investors are still propping up Tesla. Although that is because some human like $50,000+ robot with a net will clean my pool better than the current $500 dedicated robot. And while I had at least 10 companies to choose from for my pool robot, Tesla will somehow have a humanoid robot monopoly.
Anyway, keep dreaming, rubes. If your Tesla lottery ticket hits, instead of crashing, you can maybe buy a 1990s supercar replicar.
Someone should buy it then LS swap it just for the Lulz.
For God’s sake they spend billions on these and never drive them. Wouldn’t it be easier to finance an effective penis enlargement medical treatment? 8 figures and one dent and the value is destroyed and no parts available. No wonder no one drives them. They aren’t supercars because they aren’t cars if no one drives them.
It’s one thing to ague a proper McLaren F1 is a museum piece at this point, but this is just a fancy Factory5 Roadster.
Things are getting absurd. four hundred k fox body mustang resto mods, twenty million dollar McLarens, commoner garden ‘cars/suvs/suppositories’ for fifty to eighty plus k. The end times are upon us! When does wwiii or twenty-nine level market crash kick off.
Crazy, crazy, crazy!
Everything is inflated except the cars the billionaires actually make, which are totally undesirable and can be had for fire sale prices.
attention billionaires: I’m about 1/3 the age & 2x the size of your average billionaire competition for the Murraymobile. I am also a 20-year veteran of death metal, hardcore, & powerviolence moshpits; I will happily secure your place by crowd-killing everyone else in this moshpit so you can place your bid. My contract negotiations start at $250 Million, DM me let’s chat
It would be cheaper. But you failed to provide your DM address and chances are the FBI now knows everything about you even though it is a joke. You forgot to put JK in your post it might not be too late as they may be busy planning to arrest the new mayor of NY.
Fuck yeah. And why is every goddamn mosh pit a circle pit anymore? Let’s tear some shit up.
Wait, when were they no longer circles? I mean, my last ‘pit experience was Kreator around ’93ish, first I guess Dead Kennedys in ’84 (Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel I think..)
A nostalgia bomb for the “I must matter because look what I can buy” club. It’s going to be better than printing money.
Many billionaires in one place? Hmmmm
Ask any car enthusiast what the greatest car
of the ’90sis, and they’llprobablytell you it’s the McLaren F1.Nah was never a fan.
Carrera GT
Can I get it with red pillow velour and a 8 track player? Asking for a friend
I speculated this in the beginning: he’s building 5 and selling 1 to 3 to pay for much or all of the project. Not only that, building 5 would be cheaper per unit than 1.
Yawn. Another Billionaire’s codpiece for the average lifetime wages of a middle-manager. Gordon, if you are such a brilliant engineer, how about making a MINI for the 21st century that is brilliant to drive, easy to live with, and $30K? THAT would impress me. Any idiot can make a fast car for those with bottomless pockets.
Well it says it will fetch probably 20 million so that is probably the lifetime earnings of a few middle managers haha
Trouble is that making such a car requires a lot more than just engineering skills, I guess. You’d also need a lot of cleverness in manufacturing, and just all the million details of running a business that you don’t think about until you’re in the middle of it.
Does it really? Of no one ever drives it who knows if it is good or a piece of shit?
$30K is what it takes to get the 1/8 scale model of the Ueno Clinic. As someone said the other day, I want off this ride.
For 30k you could buy a large 3D printer and make it any size you want
No way government regulations it is cheaper and more profitable to build a super car that doesn’t pass regulations but doesn’t need to and sell for a fortune and no one ever drives one.
Except he already tried that 15 years ago with the T.25 and T.27, and the MOTIV 5 years ago, but they went nowhere. Cars like that are infinitely more difficult, it’s hard enough to make a hypercar.
He should try harder.
Does it come with SiriusXM?
Or CarPlay/Android Auto (wireless of course)