The McMurtry Speirling isn’t just the fastest accelerating car on the planet, it generates insane downforce from its electric fans.
Some cars are built for luxury, while others are built for speed. Every once in a while, a car is built purely for breaking records. The McMurtry Speirling first showed up at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2021, and was the first hypercar of David McMurtry’s new company. The British automaker made its entrance heard across the world with a thundering hiss.
The bat-mobile-looking electric car pushed the boundary for what was possible for EVs. Surely, the Tesla Model S Plaid can learn a thing or two from McMurtry Automotive’s vision of electrification. After several years of development, the Speirling shattered all records and secured the title of the world’s fastest-accelerating car.
Gearheads can’t have everything, and such is the case with the McMurtry Speirling. For example, the electric supercar isn’t road legal in its current state, and you can’t have a nice brick driveway if you own one. The point is, the agile track monster creates enough downforce to pull bricks out of your driveway.
The McMurtry Speirling Broke The Goodwood Hill Climb Record
The Brits built the McMurtry Speirling to hunt down F1 cars and shatter records, and shatter records it did. For 23 long years, Nick Heidfeld’s record reigned supreme over the Goodwood Hill Climb, his McLaren MP4/13 blasting up the slope in just 41.6 seconds. But in 2019, Romain Dumas shook things up with his Volkswagen ID. R, breaking the record with a time of 39.9 seconds.
And yet, right when the spectators thought they’d seen it all, the 2022 event brought a new challenger to the stage – the McMurtry Speirling. The adorably short hypercar received a skilled driver – Max Chilton. The Spéirling exploded off the starting line with its two electric motors whirring in unison, churning out a jaw-dropping 1,000 horsepower.
With a dial on the steering wheel to adjust the output, the car hurtled up the hill at breakneck speeds never seen before. The Speirling is well-equipped for it, with a spec sheet that any ICE can only dream of. The car’s battery pack boasted a range of 300 miles, providing enough juice to keep the car going for about 20 minutes at maximum power, delivering lap times on par with a GT4 class car. And with DC fast charging at over 200 kW, the car could be ready for another run in no time. Despite its battery and electric motors, the Speirling weighs a mere 2000 lbs.
McMurtry Is The Fastest Accelerating Road Car Ever (1.4 Seconds)
Breaking the Goodwood record was just the start for the McMurtry Speirling. The second bird this stone killed was the record for the fastest accelerating car, and not even the Rimac Nevera could match the Spéirling’s blistering pace. In 1.4 seconds, the car reached 0-60mph leaving a trail of dust and smoke. To top it all off, it reached 100 miles per hour in less than 2.7 seconds, leaving even Mat Watson from Carwow breathless.
MucMurtry’s hypercar shot through the quarter-mile with a mind-bending 7.97 seconds on the clock. That’s a feat that would be difficult for even The 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 to match. The Speirling has a top speed of 150 miles per hour, but an impressive top speed was never its goal.
The McMurtry Speirling Generates 4440-LBS Of Downforce
The idea of downforce is to pull the car toward the ground. The McMurtry Speirling does the opposite – it pulls the ground towards itself. How it does this is simple. It uses two fans mounted behind the cockpit.
Two fans generate a lot of suction, but knowing how much will stagger you for a moment. The McMurtry Speirling was recently in Dubai where it smoked many supercars at the Dubai Autodrome, and Supercar Blondie test drove it on the streets as well. While she wanted to turn on the fans to demonstrate the car’s ground effect aero, the team advised against it. Placing the McMurtry in a real-world situation, the fans create enough suction to destroy Blondie’s brick driveway. The built-in asphalt-sucking vacuum cleaner generates an impossible 4,440 lb of downforce at standstill. When moving close to top speed, the numbers amp up to about 5000 lbs of downforce, allowing the Speirling to take bends at 3G of grip.
For comparison, the Bugatti Veyron only manages 400 lbs of downforce at top speed. As you may imagine, the fans generate a head-splitting 120 decibels of noise. That makes it the loudest electric car to ever leave a factory.
The Speirling has a curb weight of under 2,200 lbs thanks to its full carbon fiber monocoque. That gives it a horse for every two pounds of weight, and enough downforce to drive it upside down on a tunnel roof.
McMurtry Owners Will Get Seat Fittings And Custom Interior
The spec sheet looks fantastic, and the exterior looks like something out of a Batman movie, but the interior is as basic as it gets. Following the traditional hypercar design philosophy, the cockpit is driver-centric. There are no cupholders, infotainment, or glove compartments – only a futuristic steering wheel and a few buttons. Speaking of buttons, there are two red ones on either side to facilitate an emergency stop or turn on the fire extinguisher.
The left side of the cockpit has a vertical door that drivers will have to climb in through. In case of an emergency, the right side comes free (a hatch) to monkey your way out of a wreck. The interior is claustrophobically small, but McMurtry Automotive has a workaround. Every buyer gets their custom seat to ensure an ergonomic ride inside the tight cockpit.
The McMurtry Speirling generates more downforce than most F1 cars, and can take tight corners with the hand pointing anywhere on the speedometer. With 5000 lbs of downforce, your primary fear should be vacuuming half the city upwards during a casual drive. That’s when McMurtry Automotive releases the long-anticipated street-legal version of the current track-only monster.
